


Kith, or Kin?

by Fluterbev



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Angst, Blair Sandburg's Father, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Partner Betrayal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-11-27
Updated: 2005-11-27
Packaged: 2017-10-17 12:32:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 52,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/176891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fluterbev/pseuds/Fluterbev
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone who knows about sentinels is committing crimes in Cascade. As Ellison works to solve the case, a conspiracy comes to light which threatens to end his partnership with Sandburg forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kith, or Kin?

Another day, another robbery.

Frustrated, bone-weary and deeply troubled, Jim Ellison drove away from the crime scene, heading home toward Prospect rather than back to the PD. He had been working around the clock since being assigned this case, and Simon had urged him to take a breather. Extending his senses to no avail had left him with a pounding headache, and he hoped that perhaps a shower and a couple of hours sleep would help.

Entering the loft a short while later, Jim jumped in surprise when Blair Sandburg almost walked into him, as his elusive partner and roommate headed out of his bedroom into the kitchen. “Whoa, man,” Sandburg said, his eyes widening in surprise, “I didn’t hear you come in.”

Ellison hadn’t laid eyes on Sandburg much recently, as his anthropological partner was always so god damned busy at Rainier these days. They had barely spoken two words to each other in passing during the past week, with Jim tied up with the case and Blair totally absorbed in his academic activities.

It was a measure of Ellison’s exhaustion that he hadn’t heard Sandburg either. Tired, irritable and not in the mood to chat, he growled a reply. “Just watch where you’re going, Chief. Okay?”

Blair raised both hands in a defensive gesture. “Hey, I’m sorry, all right? I didn’t mean to startle you. And anyway,” his eyes narrowed speculatively, “what’s up with that? You should have heard  _me_  coming, even if I didn’t hear  _you_. What’s going on with you, man?”

Ellison ignored his pointed question. Instead, he challenged, “I thought you’d be at Rainier. What are you doing home?”

Sandburg shook his head. “Strange as it may seem, I live here, man. I’ve got the afternoon off. Then I have a night class to teach later.” Without pause, the issue was deflected. “Why are  _you_  here?”

“I’m taking a break.” Ellison yawned, aware of Sandburg’s scrutiny. “Simon told me to get some rest then go back later.” A hand alighting on his head made him step back, opening his eyes. “What the...” he started, brushing Sandburg’s arm away.

Undaunted as ever, Sandburg stood his ground. “You have a headache, right?” He paused. “Am I right?” he demanded again.

“Leave it alone, Chief,” Jim snapped resentfully. “I’m gonna get a couple hours sleep, then I’ll be good to go.” Blair was shaking his head, his earnest expression fixed on Jim. Not for the first time, Ellison considered what a pushy little bastard Sandburg was, and he was definitely not in the mood to deal with him right now. 

But Jim’s moods never seemed to faze Sandburg in the slightest. “C’mon, man, I can help. You’re far too wound up to sleep. We could do that guided meditation, you know, the one to relieve stress? C’mon, don’t be so goddamn stubborn, Jim! I can help. You know I can!”

Jim grouchily pondered which would be easier - giving in to Sandburg’s incessant demand, or pulling out his gun and shooting him. Deciding it wasn’t worth the paperwork, he opted for the former. “Okay, you win,” he said with weary bad grace. His head  _was_  killing him. Maybe Sandburg’s ‘cure’ would help sort it out. “Where do you want me?”

Sandburg grinned, and masterfully restrained himself from turning Jim’s question into a double entendre. “Upstairs. If you lie down while we do the visualization, you can go to sleep right afterwards.”

“Fine.” 

Jim led the way up to his bed, and after setting an alarm for a couple of hour’s time, he complied with Blair’s instruction to lie down and breathe deeply. “We’ll start at your shoulders, Jim. Those muscles are all knotted up, and we’re gonna relax them. Tense, hold it, then relax. And again…” As Sandburg’s voice droned on hypnotically, Jim went through the familiar routine, the compelling tone in Sandburg’s voice leading him to the edge of sleep. A strange buzz intruded on the edge of his awareness, and the mesmerizing voice led him towards it. He went without fear, trusting Sandburg implicitly, even though the meditation was different than he expected this time round. And his awareness spiraled down, homing in on the odd sound, and its strangely fascinating cadences…

***

Changing the timbre of his voice, Blair ventured, “Jim?”

When there was no reply, and he was certain that Ellison was deeply zoned, Sandburg retreated down the stairs, leaving behind the hissing white noise generator which was holding the sentinel’s attention. Praying fervently - to whatever deity might be listening - that the zone would hold, he waited expectantly by the phone. It rang dead on time, and he snatched it up after a single ring. “Hello?”

_“It’s me.”_

“Hang on a minute.” Blair held the phone away from his ear a moment, and leaning on the kitchen counter, he strained his neck to look up at Jim where he lay in the loft bedroom. The prone detective hadn’t moved. Blair picked up the phone again. “Look, this is a really bad time. Jim’s here. I managed to put him into a zone, and I don’t think he can hear us, but you’d better make this quick.”

There was a pause. Then the man’s voice said coldly,  _“Don’t give me orders, Tommy. Remember who’s calling the shots here.”_

Blair ran a hand nervously through his hair. “I know, all right? But this is too risky. You can’t call me here again. I had no idea that Jim was going to be home. This could have blown everything!”

 _“I have enormous faith in your abilities, Tommy,”_  the voice soothed.  _“So far you haven’t let me down. But I’ll make this brief. I need to meet you. I’ll be waiting. The usual place, in forty minutes. Don’t be late.”_  The phone went dead.

Blair replaced the phone, and headed hurriedly back up to Jim, who had, thankfully, remained insensible throughout the whole exchange. Blair breathed a sigh of relief, then got down to the task at hand. He had just enough time to get the sentinel out of the zone and into a deep sleep, before keeping his appointment.

***

Jim woke, feeling rested, two hours later. Reluctantly he had to admit that Sandburg’s relaxation exercise had worked, just as it usually did. The loft was quiet and empty, his partner having no doubt headed off to teach his class. After a quick shower and a bite to eat, Ellison headed back to the station.

Jim might be feeling better, but Simon was showing the strain in his demeanor when the Major Crime team met to review the case. “Five consecutive days, five robberies.” Banks’s tone was grim, as he summarized what had gone on in his own inimitable style. “Five diverse locations - a private house, a country club, a museum, an antique dealer’s and an art gallery. Priceless artwork and antiques stolen from all of them. Whoever is doing these robberies has done their homework. Only the rarest, most valuable pieces in each instance were stolen.”

Banks scanned his detectives expectantly. “You’ve all been working on this for five days, gentlemen. I want answers. Anyone have a theory?”

Henri Brown spoke out. “None of it’s easy to get rid of, Captain. The pieces are all unique enough, identifiable enough, that the perp won’t shift ‘em easily.”

“I’m talking to my snitches about foreign buyers,” Rafe piped up. “Nothing’s turned up yet, Captain. But my guess is the perp could be planning to ship the artifacts out of state before moving them on.”

There was logic in that argument, but not enough substance to satisfy the Captain. “This is all conjecture, gentlemen. I need facts. Ellison? Anything come back from the forensic side?”

Jim knew that Simon wasn’t just talking about regular forensics. “Nothing, sir.”

Banks looked grim. But the meeting had reached its conclusion, if nothing new was forthcoming. “Okay people, get back to work. Get me some results.” Everyone rose and began to leave, the dismissal plain. But Simon halted Ellison. “Jim, not you.”

As the door closed behind the last of the exiting detectives, Banks and Ellison shared a troubled look. “Tell me,” Banks pleaded, “that you were mistaken.”

Ellison shook his head. “I wish I could, sir. But after this one, I’m more sure than ever.”

Banks was regarding him intently. “Jesus, Jim. I have the Mayor on my back, because his country club cronies are pressuring  _him_. If this really is personal, like you say, then we’re too close to the public eye on this one.”

“I know.” Ellison was grim. “But the evidence is overwhelming. Whoever is doing these robberies knows I’m a sentinel. And knows exactly how to keep my senses confused. There’s no doubt in my mind.”

Simon pulled a cigar out of his pocket, twirling it in his fingers. “Your call, Detective,” he said, reluctance in his tone. “I know you don’t want anyone else at the PD to know about your… abilities. But keeping the rest of the people working on this in the dark is getting us nowhere fast.”

“I know.”

There was a pause for a moment, then Banks asked, “What about Sandburg? I thought for sure he would want to be in on this. This is his area of expertise, after all. And I don’t just mean the sentinel thing - he seems to know a lot about the kind of artifacts that are being taken.”

Jim shook his head. “He’s always too damn busy these days. He’s taken on extra classes, and never has any free time. I can’t get him involved right now.”

Banks was incredulous. “Are you telling me you haven’t spoken to him about this?”

Ellison shook his head. “Simon, Blair is overloaded right now. I hardly ever see him anymore, let alone get the chance to tell him about my cases.”

“Jim,” the Captain said forcefully, “this isn’t just  _any_  old case! This is someone conducting high profile robberies, who knows exactly what your edge is! If ever we needed Sandburg, it’s now. I want you to bring him in on this, stat! And that is not a suggestion, detective. It’s an order!”

Jim nodded reluctantly. “Yes, sir.”

***

Later, while reviewing video footage from a surveillance camera at the scene of the latest robbery, Jim leaned back in his chair, tendons popping as he stretched. Jesus, he thought, this robbery was just the same as the others. If there had been any doubt in his mind before about the perp knowing about his senses, they were gone for good now.

The forensic report had come in, confirming the same modus operandi as the other robberies. Whoever was committing them was leaving no conventional evidence behind. Not one fingerprint, footprint, piece of thread or stray hair had been discovered. That, in itself, was not alarming, hinting simply at the professionalism of the perpetrator. 

But, forcing his mind to a logical perusal of the facts, Jim had to accept that the evidence led to one inescapable conclusion. His sentinel senses were being knowingly, deliberately and maliciously toyed with. 

It was public knowledge that Ellison was in charge of the investigation. The unusual nature of the robberies ensured that they had quickly become Major Crime’s territory, and pressure from the powers-that-be had ensured that the top detective in that division had been assigned as the lead investigator. The media were constantly dogging Jim’s footsteps, seeking soundbites; so his face and name were always in the news. That the perp might be baiting him personally, therefore, was not an outlandish assumption. It was certainly not the first time such things had happened in the course of an investigation, and for Ellison in particular, that scenario was more like the same old story.

More crucially, in terms of confirming his darkest suspicions, Ellison had never, since his senses had come on line, gotten so little from a crime scene. The five consecutive robberies that had occurred had provided the sentinel - as opposed to the detective - with nothing at all to go on, except the growing certainty that his unique abilities were being deliberately misled. 

One example was that he had identified an odd residual smell at the first two crime scenes as being a mixture of chili and lemon juice - both of which combined to confuse his sentinel senses by masking normally occurring odors, such as body odor. In fact, Blair had found that particular fact out early in their partnership, in one of his tests. Other than that, no additional odors could be detected. 

Then, in the third robbery, a weird sensation had assailed him - a not-unpleasant sensation he was all too familiar with. He had concluded that the perp had somehow distributed a substance which mimicked female pheromones at the scene, as his response had been eerily similar to that which he had experienced during the jewel robberies case, when he had become infatuated with Laura McCarthy.

Similar methods of misdirection had been employed in the fourth robbery. And finally, in this latest one, something had apparently been placed over the security camera, obscuring the view. Sound had remained, but nothing had been audible to either normal or enhanced ears. Until, that is, Jim had zeroed in on a barely audible hiss, which he instantly recognized as a white noise generator - a device which wouldn’t have meaning in this context to anyone other than a sentinel.

Unknown to Simon, Jim had gone so far as to make enquiries among some of his shadier contacts about Lee Brackett, a dangerous man who was well aware of Jim’s abilities. In fact, as Jim well remembered, Brackett had himself once used white noise as a technique to confuse his sentinel senses. But the incarcerated rogue CIA agent was apparently still safely locked away. Ellison was beginning to wonder, however, if the ex-agent’s ravings about Jim’s enhanced senses were at last being taken seriously in circles he would just as soon not know anything about him.

Ellison’s fear - that this whole charade was a kind of test of his limitations by some shady government agency - had prompted him to consider putting into operation the escape plan he had secretly cooked up after the Brackett incident. His time in Covert Ops had left him with a number of contacts he would trust with his life, in various parts of the world, and so disappearing was a viable option. The fact that he was even considering it was part of the reason he hadn’t pushed to get Sandburg involved in this case. The less Blair knew, the safer he would be.

But damn, he didn’t want to do that. He didn’t want to go on the run, leaving behind his life in Cascade, his friends and his career. It rankled that he was being pushed into a corner like this. So, for now, he had decided to brazen it out, hoping that the fact he was in the public eye so much would protect him.

Now, dragging his attention back to the task at hand, hoping against hope that he could learn something - anything - from the security video, which might give him the break he was looking for, his attention was drawn back again to the unmistakable hiss of the white noise generator. Something about it tickled his memory. He had heard a sound exactly like it recently, but for the life of him couldn’t think where.

Pondering the problem, trying to force himself to remember, he focused in on the noise, and his awareness spiraled down, down, down…

***

He jerked back to awareness with a start. “Wha…”

The large figure looming over him was, he was instantly aware, Simon. The big police captain was regarding him with concern. “You back with me, Jim?”

Ellison rubbed his eyes. His mouth was dry, as though he had been breathing through it. “What the hell happened?”

“You were zoned. I called your name a few times, then when I touched you, you snapped out of it.”

“How long…” Jim began, then looked at his watch. He blinked, unable to believe his eyes. “It’s nearly nine o’clock.” He did a rapid calculation. “Four hours? I’ve been here four hours?”

Simon looked grim. “Do you want me to call Sandburg?”

Jim shook his head. “No. No, I’m all right. I must be more tired than I thought. I haven’t done that in…” his attention was grabbed again by the video, which was still running, “so long…” the buzz luring him in…

A sharp pain shocked him back to the here-and-now. “Detective!” Simon hissed, “Stop it! What the hell is the matter with you?”

Jim palmed his shoulder, where Simon had struck him. Then in a flash of insight, he reached over and shut off the sound on the TV. He instantly felt more aware. “What the hell?” he snapped, looking at the blank screen for a moment longer. He picked up the tape case, his clearer mind quickly making the necessary deductions. “This is supposed to be a one hour tape. It’s been playing for more than four hours, Simon. It’s been doctored; made into a continuous loop.”

“So,” Simon said, following his logic, “the perp made this, and substituted it for the real tape. It’s been done before. But why is it making you zone?”

Jim looked at Simon. The Captain’s face mirrored the grimness in Ellison’s voice. “It’s a message,” the detective stated flatly. “One that only I would understand.”

***

Captain and detective remained at the station until close to midnight, trying and failing to uncover more evidence that might lead to an answer. Then, each as exhausted as the other, they headed off to their respective homes.

The loft was quiet and empty when Jim got there, the lights off, Sandburg still out. Jim suspected that, in addition to his hefty duties at the university, his roommate had some woman he was dating, as he’d stayed out all night so often recently.

Jim hardly remembered showering and getting into bed. And it felt as though he had only been asleep for a matter of minutes when the phone startled him awake.  _“Get dressed, Ellison,”_  Banks growled in his ear as he fumbled the receiver into position,  _“and get your ass over here. There’s been another one.”_

~oO0Oo~

The private museum was a prime target for their serial robber, and the level of security there was lamentable considering the value of its contents. Leaving the hysterical curator in the hands of some of his uniformed colleagues, Jim donned latex gloves and went to look at the scene.

A familiar odor assailed Ellison as he walked in the door; not, for once, the odd chili-lemon mixture, and emphatically not female pheromones. Spinning in place, he called out to the other detective in the room. “Hey, H? Is Sandburg here?”

Henri Brown shook his head. “Not if he ain’t with you, man.”

Shaking his head, Jim tried to dismiss the distracting olfactory sensation, which he assumed to be a phantom. If he was going around smelling Sandburg, he thought wryly, he was closer to the edge than he had previously thought.

He set his mind to the task at hand, and prowled around the remains of the broken glass case. Only one item had been stolen from this collection - a priceless Incan treasure. Maybe that was why, Jim mused, he was thinking about Sandburg. This really was the anthropologist’s kind of thing.

But no matter how much he tried to put his absent partner out of his mind, the smell wouldn’t leave him. And after a moment, something caught his eye, over where the aroma was strongest. Something trapped in-between the shards of shattered glass.

“Hey, H?” to his surprise, his voice was calm, rational.

“Yeah, Jim?” Brown replied.

“Go get Simon for me, would ya?”

“Sure thing.” Jim listened as Brown left, and as soon as his colleague was out of sight, he produced tweezers and an evidence bag from his pocket. Delicately, he extracted the hair that was caught in the broken case, and put it in the bag.

A long, curly, auburn hair.

By the time Brown had arrived back with the Captain, Ellison was over the other side of the room. Banks looked at him pointedly. “Anything, Jim?” he asked.

“No. Just like the others,” Ellison answered, his voice even. He maintained his calm, professional demeanor as he demonstrated to Banks and Brown exactly how little there was to find.

And he hoarded his secret. But he felt like he was dying inside.

***

It had been early - barely seven a.m. - when Ellison had arrived at the museum. Immediately afterward, he had spent an obligatory, minimum amount of time at the station, pouring over the same old apparent lack of evidence. And a while later, after telling Simon he had a lead he needed to follow up, he ditched his easily recognizable truck and borrowed an unmarked car from the station fleet. 

Now, parked at the back of Hargrove Hall with his Jags cap pulled low over his face, he put into practice the tricks his treacherous partner had taught him, listening intermittently to the comings and goings in Sandburg’s office in the basement.

It was after two o’clock in the afternoon when his surveillance paid off. Sandburg’s phone rang, and Ellison listened, his teeth grinding, as the call was answered.

“Blair Sandburg.”

_“Ellison’s on to you, Tommy. You need to disappear.”_

A pause. A heart racing. “Shit!” Another pause. “What the hell happened? I was careful, man, I swear-”

_“I don’t know. But remember our deal. You keep away from him until this is over, or-”_

The caller was cut short by Sandburg’s frantic voice. “Look, I’ll do it okay. I’ll get out of the loft. Just don’t…”

 _“Remember, Tommy,”_  the emotionless voice cut in.  _“Check in at the pre-arranged time. Get moving.”_

_Click._

“Oh man.” As the dial tone whirred away, Sandburg was apparently now talking to himself. “Oh man. Oh shit.” He sounded near to tears, his breathing ragged, his heart racing as he put the receiver down.

Outside in the car, Jim stared coldly into the distance, ice in his soul and no pity in his heart.

***

When the detective walked into the loft a short while later, Sandburg was just emerging from his bedroom, jacket on and backpack over his shoulder. He obviously hadn’t wasted any time in getting ready to leave.

He also wasn’t paying attention, apparently not expecting Jim to be here, because Ellison’s voice made him nearly jump out of his skin. “Going somewhere, Sandburg?”

Blair had always been a master of the quick recovery, and didn’t disappoint now. “Oh, hey, man. You startled me.” He smiled, a little too brightly, obviously still hoping that his cover hadn’t entirely been blown despite the warning, his knuckles white where they gripped the strap of his pack. “What are you doing home? I thought you were busy working the case.”

“I am.” Ellison’s humorless gaze was firmly fixed on Sandburg, who shifted a little uncomfortably under his regard. “Where are you going?” he asked, appending sarcastically, “‘Partner’?”

Clutching at straws now, Sandburg didn’t look Jim in the eye. His voice shook a little. “Something came up. I, uh, I have to go out of town for a few days. Okay, man?”

“Riiight,” Ellison drawled; not moving from where he was blocking the exit, his back against the wood of the door. 

Sandburg made a move towards him, but halted when Jim didn’t budge. “C’mon, man. Let me past,” he pleaded, his heart beating triple time. 

Something about that gave Ellison enormous satisfaction. “I don’t think so,” he said; then added, “Tommy.”

Sandburg didn’t answer, although the color fled from his face; the name reverberating between them like a death knell.

Ellison allowed the tense silence to linger for an uncomfortable moment, before he spoke. When he did, his voice was soft, like gentle rain with the promise of a hurricane to come. “I’ve been wondering, Chief. Are you some kind of double, clone, whatever you want to call it? Is this like some weird science fiction thing? Am I going to find a pod under your bed, and Sandburg’s body dumped in the bay?”

When the other man remained silent, he carried on, “Because if Sandburg was dead, it’d be a relief. It would definitely be better than the alternative. Because if I’m wrong, and you  _are_  Sandburg, then I have to believe that my ‘friend’, who I gave a home to for the last two years, who watched my back and taught me everything I know about using my senses, was a fake all along. That Blair Sandburg never really existed. And I really have to wonder exactly who _Tommy_  is. And who he’s working with. And what the hell he’s been doing to me all this time.”

Sandburg was now looking at the floor, his expression unreadable. He remained silent as Jim went on, “How much of it was a lie, Chief? The friendship thing? The research thing, huh? Did you get off on it, getting the better of me? Because let me tell you; you played me good. I trusted you. I trusted you more than I have  _ever_  trusted anybody in my entire life. And hey, guess what?” He laughed; a little self deprecatingly. “I actually cared about you. About you being safe. About you being happy. Guess that’s gonna to give you a big old laugh when your ass is thrown in jail, huh?”

“Jim,” Sandburg protested, glancing up. “It’s not what you-”

“Shut up! Just shut the fuck up!” Sandburg winced, his eyes closing, as Ellison’s barely contained bitterness sprang loose. “I don’t wanna hear it. Save it for the judge. Because I’m telling you, ‘Tommy’ or whatever it is you call yourself.  _You_  are going  _down_.” As the detective spoke, he reached to his belt, unhooking the cuffs hanging there. “So make it easy on both of us, huh? Don’t fight me on this. Because it’s over. And you can’t possibly win.” He approached Sandburg, the cuffs in his hand. 

Sandburg opened his eyes and watched as the other man came closer. Their eyes met, angry blue to anguished blue. “I’m sorry, Jim,” Ellison’s former partner said, a deep, aching misery in his voice. “I’m really, really sorry.” 

And he sprayed the mace that was concealed in his hand directly into the sentinel’s face.

***

Jim came back to sanity some time later, cool relief of a wet cloth wielded by gentle hands over his burning face. Forgetting momentarily what had happened, he growled, “Sandburg?”

“Easy, Jim.” Simon Banks’s bass rumble. “Just lie still. Paramedics are on the way.” 

Memory, bitter as bile, returned with a rush. “Call them off.”

“Jim…” Simon protested, but Ellison reached up and stilled his hand. 

“Call them off, damn it! I’m okay. I mean it, Simon. Do it!”

It wasn’t the first time that detective had given an order to captain and had it obeyed. But since Jim’s sentinel senses had come on line, Simon knew better than to protest at the about turn. In these matters, he fully acknowledged that he was the novice. 

Jim listened as Simon pulled out his cell phone and cancelled the EMTs. And he sniffed at the liquid infusing the cloth which was covering his features. “You’re bathing me with milk and honey?” he pointed out incredulously, as Simon finished the call. “What the hell is this?”

He could almost hear the shrug. “Sandburg called me, told me you needed help and to use the stuff he’d put out for you. I got here, found you on the floor, with this in a bowl beside you. The wet cloth was already covering your face. Where the hell is Blair, Jim? It’s not like him to leave you at a time like this.”

Jim pushed himself up, pulling the cloth from his face. Itchy red eyes glared out of a ruddy, swollen face at the Captain. “He did this to me,” he said bitterly. “He’s the one committing the robberies, and I’m not sure any more if his real name ever was ‘Sandburg’.”

Banks, shocked for once into silence, could only stare back.

***

In addition to leaving out the bowl of milky solution and tending Jim’s face, Sandburg, it seemed, had also paused long enough to put out a bottle of antihistamine tablets before going on the run. Jim dutifully downed two pills with reluctant bad grace, before getting down to the matter at hand.

Simon’s first instinct was to put out an APB on Sandburg’s car but, looking outside, Jim discovered that the Volvo had been left in its parking space. And in any case, they both agreed that dealing with this situation through normal police channels was a no-brainer. 

“I have no idea what his motives are, Simon,” Jim told the captain, “or who he’s working with. Jesus, he’s dangerous. He’s influenced how I use my senses from day one, and he knows far more about my limitations than I do. We arrest him before we know what he’s up to, and he could blow the knowledge of my senses wide open.”

So they had agreed to handle this themselves for now. To try to apprehend Blair outside of normal police channels and procedure, so they could discover the extent of whatever conspiracy he was a part of. Banks didn’t like it - understanding that both their livelihoods and reputations were on the line here – but, reluctantly, he had to agree that they had no choice, at least in the short term, if Jim’s abilities were to continue to be kept out of the public eye.

Using his clout in the PD, Banks set immediate checks in motion on Sandburg’s credit cards and bank account, as well as taking steps to obtain telephone records from both the loft and Blair’s office phone. And as soon as he recovered sufficiently, Ellison put to use less conventional methods of detection - going through Sandburg’s abandoned belongings with the eyes and nose of a sentinel, looking for clues as to where he might have gone.

In the end, it was the Captain’s mundane methods which paid off. A withdrawal of eighty dollars - all that Sandburg had in his meager account - was made from an ATM later that night in the east side of the city. Using Banks’s influence and Ellison’s formidable persuasive powers to gain access to the various tapes - in lieu of actual warrants - A search of surveillance cameras from that bank and the surrounding district showed their quarry’s route as he disappeared off into the industrial district. 

So, therefore, just over twenty-four hours later, Ellison found himself concealed in the shadows in the doorway of a warehouse, the spoor of his enemy in his nostrils; the agony of the most poignant betrayal he had ever experienced shoved deep down, subsumed underneath his volcanic, simmering fury.

***

Not surprisingly, given their suspicions, there was no robbery the night after Sandburg assaulted his partner and disappeared.

Now, one day later, sitting in their impromptu operations room - his own office - Banks waited for Ellison to check in. He had explained away his lead detective’s absence in the middle of the case by telling his superiors that Ellison was undercover, exploring a lead. It was nothing more nor less than the truth, in any case.

Banks was deeply troubled, and not just by the fact that the man they suspected of the robberies was someone he had come to regard as a close personal friend. Something about this whole scenario just didn’t ring true.

Not that he didn’t believe what Ellison had told him. The evidence of Blair’s involvement with the robberies was pretty conclusive, after all, even if it wasn’t necessarily conclusive enough to convince a jury. A single hair found at a crime scene was purely circumstantial - it could have gotten there any number of ways. And a distinctive body odor lingering beside the smashed display case? That would just get laughed out of court, not that it would ever make it there in the first place.

Then there was that strange phone call, during which Ellison had overheard a mysterious male voice calling Blair ‘Tommy’, and urging him to go into hiding because Jim was on to him. More non-admissible evidence, but damning nonetheless in the eyes of the sentinel and the sentinel’s boss.

But the most conclusive evidence of guilt was Sandburg’s callous spraying of pepper spray into the his face when Ellison had confronted him. Sandburg had to have known the devastating effect that act of violence would have on someone with Jim’s sensitivities. Hell, the kid had previously gone out of his way to keep any and all harsh chemicals away from the sentinel’s skin, and here he was spraying  _mace_  at him, for Christ’s sake.

But afterwards, instead of getting the hell out of there as fast as he could, Sandburg had stayed to put together a soothing, natural concoction which would alleviate the worst of the agony he had put Ellison through. He had made sure antihistamines were within reach. And he had called Simon, to ensure that Jim would be taken care of.  _“I can’t explain right now,”_  he had said,  _“but Jim really needs you. Please, get over there, man, as fast as you can. I left everything you’ll need to help him.”_

Sandburg had sounded devastated, as though his world had just ended. And he had cut off Simon’s inevitable query.  _“Just… just tell him, man, I never meant for it to end like this. He was…”_  Here Blair had choked, as though the words hurt him. Then he had forced out,  _“He was the best friend I ever had. Tell him… tell him it wasn’t a lie, the friendship. It was never a lie. He needs you now, man. Please, help him.”_  And then he had hung up.

 _He needs you now_. Simon knew that Sandburg hadn’t meant that purely in the sense of rendering first aid, but in the long term. He had, effectively, entrusted the sentinel into Banks’s care and, in the process, indicated his intention to disappear from their lives forever.

Ellison, however, was blind to the possibility of gray areas in this situation. As far as he was concerned, Sandburg had intentionally betrayed his trust in the most devastating way imaginable. And any fond feelings the detective might have previously had about the anthropologist had been incinerated in the funeral pyre of his rage.

Sandburg, Jim had declared, was working with some unknown, shady figure, who could be anything from a perp seeking revenge on Ellison to a member of a covert government agency. Sandburg had cheated and lied his way into Ellison’s confidence, worming his way into the detective’s home and workplace. He had manipulated Jim’s senses, quite likely limiting their effectiveness as much as helping develop them. He had committed crimes with the intent of not only obtaining a fortune in stolen artifacts, but also rubbing his knowledge about Jim’s senses in the sentinel’s face along the way. And when his duplicity had been found out, he had inflicted agonizing violence on the man he had professed friendship for, and gone on the run to avoid facing up to his actions. 

Deeply troubled, Banks sat back and waited for Ellison’s call.

***

The unmistakable odor was closer now. His sense of smell wide open, Ellison acknowledged and discarded the multitude of other irrelevant scents and stenches, focusing in only on the one. Silently, using tricks he had learned long before Sandburg had come on the scene, he approached.

The figure was bent over a brazier, rubbing warmth into hands encased in fingerless gloves; the distinctive fur hat that Ellison had once found so humorous pulled down low over his ears. And, as the smell of the man he sought filled his senses, he was consumed briefly with a killing rage, which he suppressed ruthlessly.

His time for revenge would come. Now it was time for answers.

Moving as silently as a cat, he was behind Sandburg in seconds. And his prey never knew he was there until Ellison’s gun touched the back of his head.

***

The phone rang. “Banks,” Simon announced, snatching it up.

 _“It’s not him,”_  came Jim’s voice, harsh with anger and disappointment.

“What? I thought you’d tracked him-”

_“It’s not him. He traded his clothes away to somebody else.”_

“Somebody else? Who, damn it? Did you question him?”

_“Yes, sir, I did. He’s a bum, hangs out around the warehouse district. Sandburg offered fifty bucks for the guy to swap clothes with him. He did. End of story.”_

“Shit.” Fifty bucks? Sandburg must be desperate. Banks rubbed his eyes tiredly. “What the hell next? He hasn’t used his credit card apart from that one time. That was our best shot at finding him without making it official.”

There was a pause. Then Ellison announced,  _“I’m staying here, sir. Gonna scout around a bit more, see if I can get a lead. Sandburg was here. Somebody might have seen where he headed afterward. I’ve got a description of the clothes he was wearing - it’s a start.”_

“Jim,” Simon protested. “I don’t like this. Look, I’ve been thinking. You are far too close to this. I want you to come in.”

_“Is that my Captain talking, or my friend?”_

“Both, Jim.”

_“Then no, sir. I can’t do that. I can’t walk away when I’m this close.”_

Banks sighed. “Well, whatever, detective, I’m making this official. No warrant yet - hell, on the evidence we have, we’d be lucky to get Sandburg on suspicion of anything. But I’m listing him as a missing person. His photo will be distributed in patrol, and I’ll start making enquiries among his contacts at the university. I’ll keep the press out of it for now. But this way, if he’s seen, at least we can get a bead on him.”

_“Okay, sir.”_

“Just be careful, okay? I don’t like this, Jim. Any of it.”

A second or two of silence showed more eloquently than words how much Ellison agreed with that assessment.  _“Bye, sir,”_  he said. Heaving an unhappy sigh, Banks hung up the phone.

***

It was a measure of how secure Blair had begun to feel in his life - the life he had now been forced to leave behind forever - that only last week he had spent the hundred bucks he usually carried in his wallet for emergencies, and hadn’t gotten around to replacing it. It was the first time he had ever been without what Jim had once jokingly referred to as his ‘security blanket’ for such a protracted period, ever since the first time Naomi had slipped a single hundred dollar note into his pocket on his first day at Rainier.

He couldn’t, he thought bitterly, have chosen a worse time to do so. His karma was, quite clearly, seriously fucked.

Earlier, he had cleaned out his bank account, withdrawing the measly eighty dollars that he had left to his name. But in a ploy to - quite literally - put Jim off the scent, he had been forced to surrender a phenomenal fifty dollars of that as part of a trade for the disgusting, stinking clothes he was now wearing. As a result, he only had just over thirty dollars left in cash, and no chance of getting more, unless he resorted to begging or stealing. And he had no idea how long he would need to make those last few bucks last. 

And damn, he wished he didn’t keep bumping into people he knew, in the oddest places. Cascade was a sizeable city. But at times it felt like a village, and it was proving harder than Blair had anticipated to stay out of sight. He had been forbidden to leave town or contact anyone he knew for help, and the potential consequences for disobedience were very real. 

The homeless shelter was the last place he’d expected to meet an acquaintance. But as he stood in line, waiting to get a plateful of stew, he nearly jumped out of his skin when a hand clapped him on the shoulder. “Blair! I didn’t know you’d joined our little gang.” 

It took a second before Blair managed to force his heart out of his mouth and acknowledge the speaker. “Uh, Professor Williams.” 

Blair knew Williams from Rainier. They worked in the same building, though in different departments, Williams being a sociologist. “Call me Martin, please Blair,” Williams was saying, oblivious to Sandburg’s inner turmoil. “If we’re going to be working together on this, you need to drop the professor thing.”

Blair blinked. “Uh, sure.” 

“So,” Williams went on, guiding Blair over to a table, “I thought the Dean had decided this was going to be a pure Sociology venture. When did Anthro assign a researcher to the project? I wasn’t told.”

Glancing around now at faces he had been studiously avoiding looking at, Blair recognized a number of people that he knew, all of whom were attempting to blend in with the homeless who had come in to eat. Oh shit. Of all the shelters he could have picked, he had chosen the one full of social scientists. “It, uh,” he hedged rapidly in answer to Williams’s question, “was a last minute decision. You must have missed the memo.”

“Must have.” Williams looked unconcerned, as if such bureaucratic nonsense was simply a fact of life. “So, where do you want to start?”

“I, uh, I think I’ll just watch for a while.” Blair warmed to his lie, his usual enthusiasm for such endeavors easy to feign. “Get a feel for the obvious social hierarchies, you know? The pecking order, that kind of thing.”

Williams was nodding. “Fine. Good.” He rose. “Well, I’ve got to go for now, but I’ll be back out here soon, joining in the participant observation stuff with you guys. But I’ve got to do a structured interview first with the supervisor. See you later, Blair.”

“Yeah. Later, Martin.” Blair waited until the professor disappeared into the office door at the other side of the room, Then watching carefully, he waited until all of the other researchers seemed engaged. Once he was sure he was unobserved, he got up and walked out of the building.

Behind him, one pair of eyes, belonging to a young grad student Blair had once taught in Anthropology 101, watched quizzically as he made his hurried exit. Something about the expression of sheer desperation on the anthropologist’s face was ringing warning bells in his mind.

***

Simon’s enquiries at the University proved that the web of deceit Sandburg had woven was more extensive than they had first thought.

“Blair took a leave of absence from teaching nearly a week ago, Captain Banks,” Professor Stanley Granger, the Head of Anthropology told him. “Yes, he’s been here since then, mostly during the day, working in his office. He is working on his doctoral dissertation, at the writing-up stage, which is pretty labor intensive. Also, he told me he was doing consultancy work with your police department, and was spending most nights working on that. With all of that going on, I agreed to cut him some slack.”

“So,” Banks said, understanding that Blair’s duplicity had extended to his university colleagues as well as to Ellison. “Let me get this straight. He’s done no teaching at all for the past week. No extra classes, no night classes, nothing?”

“None at all, Captain. Why, is something wrong?”

Banks hedged, “He’s uh, missing. His roommate is concerned for his safety.”

“Oh my.” Granger seemed visibly shaken. “He does seem to be under a lot of pressure. Stress is an occupational hazard for young men and women at times like this, when they are nearing the culmination of their studies. But he seems to be doing so well with his research. You don’t,” he faltered, “you don’t think he would harm himself, do you?”

“I’m sorry. I can’t say,” Banks replied.

“Well, I hope very much he’ll be all right.” Granger appeared totally sincere in his concern. “We’re all very fond of Blair. He’s been with us in this department for a long time, and we’re very proud of his achievements. He is a remarkable young man.”

“Yes,” Banks agreed, the misgivings in his gut burning like indigestion. “He is.” 

***

By a combination of intimidation and subtlety, Ellison had managed to get an idea of where Sandburg had headed once he had left the industrial district. The unusual ploy of changing clothes out in the open for cash was not an event that had gone unnoticed among the other denizens of the area, some of whom had apparently trailed Sandburg in the hopes that further handouts would be forthcoming. Ellison’s interrogation techniques - as well as some judiciously employed bribery - had quickly elicited the information he required.

Now, as he entered the homeless shelter, something caught his attention, and he sniffed surreptitiously. Then grinned ferally. Sandburg had been here. The underlying stench of the homeless man’s unwashed body, which had already permeated Blair’s old clothes in the short time that he had worn them, was hovering in the air. Concentrating, he could detect the unmistakable fainter scent of Sandburg underneath it.

Inside, an unexpected additional aroma assailed his senses. The earthy scent of Simon Banks’s favorite cigars. His captain was off to one side, chatting to a small group of people masquerading, to Jim’s immediately sharp perception, as down and outs.

Banks caught sight of Ellison and, excusing himself, came to his side. “Jim,” he said. “We need to talk.”

Jim listened as Simon filled him in on what he had learned from Stanley Granger. “And that’s not all,” Simon went on. “This crowd are from Rainier, doing some kind of sociology study here. The professor in charge contacted Granger while I was in his office earlier, said that Blair had been here. At first, they thought he’d been assigned as a researcher, to join in the study. But something about him was ‘off’, and he got out the minute he was recognized. The coordinator of the study called Granger to find out what was going on.”

Banks paused, and beckoned a young man over from the group. “This is Don Yale,” he introduced. “He used to be a student of Sandburg’s. Mister Yale,” he addressed the sociologist, “can you tell Detective Ellison what you told me?”

Yale looked concerned. “Detective Ellison, you’re Blair’s friend, right? I’ve seen you around the campus.” Yale missed the tightening of Ellison’s jaw at the word ‘friend’, but it registered with Banks, nevertheless. “I’m really worried about him, Detective,” Yale went on obliviously. “He looked, oh, I don’t know, lost, somehow. The prof thought at first he was here to do a study, but I’m telling you, his clothes? They were the real thing - he’s been sleeping rough, unlike us in these threads,” he indicated his own fake scruffy outfit. “And his face, man. He was in a bad way, I’m telling you.”

Ellison’s voice was as expressionless as his features. “Did you see which way he went when he left here?”

Yale nodded. “Sure. Come on, I’ll show you.” Ellison and Banks trailed him to the exit, and Yale carried on talking to them over his shoulder. “I was worried about him, you know? Something just didn’t seem right. So I followed him out, watched where he went. He’s a good guy, Blair. Helped me out a lot when I went through a hard time as an undergrad. If it wasn’t for him, I’d have flunked out. I sure wouldn’t be doing my masters now.” 

They reached the exit, and went out onto the sidewalk. “There,” Yale pointed down the street. “He went that way, to the bus stop at the end. Got on a southbound bus; the ninety-three, I think. It goes down to Southtown, you know?”

Ellison said nothing, but his eyes focused off in the direction the bus would have gone. Banks answered for both of them. “Thank you for your help, Mister Yale.”

“It’s no problem,” Yale said. “Hey, I hope he’ll be okay, you know? Like I said, he’s a good guy. A good friend.”

Banks nodded. “We’ll do what we can to find him.”

“Okay. Thanks, Captain. Detective.” Yale headed back inside, leaving the two men on the sidewalk.

Banks turned to Ellison. “One thing is puzzling me, Jim. Why are you here? I didn’t tell anyone where I was going, just came right over from Rainier.”

Ellison’s head remained turned in the direction the bus had gone, sniffing the air. Then he turned to Banks. “I asked around,” he said. “Then I tracked Sandburg here by smell. You see I could smell his-”

Banks grimaced, holding up both hands. “Whoa, stop right there, detective. Sniffing Sandburg? Definitely too much information!”

***

Following the bus route in his car, Simon tried not to be distracted by Ellison leaning his head out of the window, breathing in Sandburg’s scent from the ether. Whatever the sentinel was doing, however, seemed to be working, because after traveling a mile or so in the direction of Southtown, he ordered, “Stop the car, Simon. Pull over.”

Simon complied, but as Ellison reached for the door handle to let himself out, Simon halted him. “Wait a second, Jim,” he said. “We need to talk about this.”

Jim’s impatience was clear. “What’s to talk about, sir? Sandburg is nearby. I can smell him.”

“I know that, Jim,” Simon answered. “But this doesn’t feel right. You heard what Yale said. Blair was in a bad way. ‘Lost’, he said. I know I’ve had my problems with the kid in the past, but none of this is like him. I just can’t see him as a robber. And why the hell is he still in Cascade, posing as a homeless guy, instead of on the road out of here with the loot? He’s sitting on ten million dollars worth of antiquities, for Christ’s sake!”

Jim didn’t answer for a moment. Then in a controlled voice, he said, “It’s a game, to him. He’s been baiting me since the first robbery, challenging me to use my senses. He wants me to chase him.”

Simon’s brow furrowed. “But why? It doesn’t make sense!”

Jim carried on in the same quiet tone. “It does if he’s working for the government. If this is some kind of field test of my abilities.”

As the possibilities of that statement sank in, Banks’s eyes widened. “Shit,” he breathed. “You think he was a plant all along.”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense.” Jim’s voice was inflectionless, but Simon could detect the turbulent emotions beneath the rigid control. “I suspected the perp we were looking for was linked to some kind of government agency, one that had found out about my senses, even before I knew that Sandburg was involved. And whoever his handler is has me under surveillance, that much I can be sure of. Otherwise how would he have known I was onto Sandburg, when I hadn’t told anybody that I suspected him?” Jim turned to look at Simon, his face ghostlike in the light from the streetlamps. “I was meant to find that hair and Sandburg’s scent at the crime scene. I performed just as they wanted me to.”

Simon shook his head in amazement. Flower-child Sandburg, a covert agent? This whole scenario was so off the wall, it could just be true. “So why the hell are you playing their game, Jim?”

“What the hell else can I do, Simon?” Anger cracked Jim’s façade. “I could disappear. I’ve made the arrangements - I have the means and the contacts, and the people behind this would never find me. But why the hell should I give up my life? He’s taken enough from me, Simon. I’ll beat him at his own game, or go down fighting. He’s not taking  _everything_!”

The anger and hurt rolling off the sentinel in waves spilled across to his friend, and Simon’s gut tightened as he realized to what extent he, too, had been played by their so-called observer, if what Jim was suggesting was true. Simon’s resolve hardened and, sitting up straighter, he pulled his service revolver from his belt, and checked the clip. “Let’s do this,” he said, his voice cold. At the very least, they deserved answers. Simon silently vowed that no government spook – whether it be Sandburg or whoever else - was going to get their hands on Jim, except over his cold, dead body. 

Jim nodded, pulling out his own weapon. Without another word, moving in tandem, they got out of the car.

And, as he followed in Ellison’s shadow to the lair of their former friend, Simon ruthlessly squelched the dubious inner voice that attempted to deny the veracity of their suspicions.

***

It hadn’t taken long, Blair realized as he watched the approaching figures from the alleyway in which he was ensconced, for Jim to catch up with him. Presumably his unplanned unmasking at the homeless shelter had been reported, and somehow the sentinel had managed to track him from there. Evasion, therefore, was not going to work. It was time for Plan ‘B’ - full frontal assault. 

Quietly, he began to talk, knowing that the approaching sentinel would hear it. “I know you’re there, man. And you know I’m here. And I know you’re probably as pissed as hell at me right now. But please, man, you’ve gotta believe me. I’m doing this for a good reason. This is about life or death.”

Ellison’s uncompromising shout broke the quiet. “Come out, with your hands up! It’s over, Sandburg.”

Blair didn’t move. Instead he spoke again. “I’m sorry, Jim. I can’t do that.” He didn’t have long now - to make this effective he had to do it soon, before Jim or Simon got too close. Keep talking, he admonished himself, ignoring the conflicting demands of his nervous system that he run  _away_  from Ellison or _toward_  him. “This isn’t about you and me, man. And it isn’t what you think it is.” He forced his voice quieter, whispering now. “Give me a few days, just a few, and I promise, I’ll turn myself in to you. But you gotta leave me alone right now.”

“No can do, Sandburg,” Ellison shouted back. The sentinel had heard him, obviously having dialed up his hearing to the maximum - exactly as Blair had hoped he would. “Come out here now, or I’m coming in after you.”

Blair forced his voice even quieter, even as he readied the small machine he held in his hand. “I’m sorry, Jim. I can’t do that.” His voice was hardly audible now, even to himself. “And I’m really sorry about this, man. But I don’t have any choice.” Finger stabbing hard, he pressed the button.  
And as the sentinel howled in agony, hands clamped hard over his ears, Blair made good his escape.

***

“I don’t need to go to the emergency room, damn it!” Ellison had begun to recover his equilibrium as soon as Banks’s car had put some distance between them and the alleyway in which they had cornered Sandburg. “Simon, c’mon! Stop the car.”

Banks glanced at him dubiously. “I’m not so sure about that, Jim. Hell, I’ve never seen you react like that.” Despite his reluctance, Ellison’s boss signaled and pulled into the side of the road. “I mean, what the hell happened? You were almost catatonic. How was I to know it was a sentinel thing?”

Ellison ignored the rhetorical question. Instead he hit himself on the forehead in self disgust. “What was I thinking? How could I let him do that?”

Simon’s patience was at an end. “Do  _what_ , Detective? Tell me what the hell is going on!”

Jim took a couple of deep breaths. “He tricked me.” The merest hint of humiliation in his tone damped down Banks’s irritation. “He kept talking quietly; got me to dial up my hearing as far as it would go. Then he hit me with something, a piercing noise; I don’t know what it was. All I  _know_ , is that it bought him the time he needed to get away.” He turned to Banks. “Simon, c’mon. Turn the car around. We have to go after him.”

Banks had anticipated, and the engine was already rolling.

They were several blocks from the entrance to the alleyway when Ellison grimaced. “Christ.”

Banks glanced at him worryingly. “What is it?”

“It’s still there. The noise.”

“Can’t you dial it down, or whatever it is you do?”

Ellison didn’t answer, his whole attention seemingly on the noise. Not knowing what else to do, Banks pulled in, and waited until Ellison got himself under control. Pained blue eyes rose to his. “Simon,” he said, “I’ve turned my hearing down low, so if I can’t hear you, you know why.” Jim opened the car door. “Let’s roll.”

Banks felt little more than useless as he watched Ellison scrabbling around in the dark alley where Blair had apparently been hiding. “Aha!” the detective declared. “Got it!”

“Got what?” Banks asked, as the detective came back towards him. Then remembering Ellison couldn’t hear him, shouted, “Got what?”

Ellison winced. “Not so loud, Captain. I’m back to normal.” He held up the object in his hand. “He’s gone. He left this. A dictaphone.”

“And?” Banks demanded.

“And,” Ellison sighed shamefacedly, “it seems to have a continuous recording of a dog whistle on it.”

Banks blinked. “A dog whistle.”

Ellison pressed the offending object into Banks’s hand, then turned to scout their location further. “Don’t even think it,” he warned.

Banks snorted, swallowing a million smart retorts, and followed.

***

Dropping the coins into the slot, Blair waited impatiently until the phone was answered.  _“Yes?”_  said the voice on the other end.

“It’s me.”

_“Well done, Tommy. One minute to spare. How are you holding up?”_

Blair swallowed. “Jim nearly caught me. I managed to put him off. I got away. It was a nearly an hour ago, and I’m way across town, so I think I lost him now.”

_“You’d better.”_

Blair let out a shaky breath. “Look, I’ve done everything you told me to, all right? Please, let me talk to her, man. I need to know she’s all right.”

_“You’ll have to take my word for that. She’s, um, a little tied up right now.”_

“Just don’t hurt her. Okay? We have a deal.”

_“You keep your end of the bargain, Tommy, and I’ll keep mine. Same time, tomorrow. Same rules. Don’t be late.”_

“I won’t,” Blair confirmed miserably. But he was talking to the air.

***

Once again trying to track their fugitive by smell, Ellison found Sandburg’s abandoned clothes in a dumpster, in another alleyway several blocks away. As Ellison held up the rancid pants, Banks grimaced. “Okay, Jim,” he said, his lip curling in distaste. “So sniff ‘em already. Which way did he go?”

Ellison looked grim. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Banks was incredulous. “What the hell do you mean?”

The sentinel shook his head. “He left everything here. All the clothes he was wearing, even his sneakers and backpack. Whatever he has on now is hiding his scent, and the residual smell has been washed away in the rain.”

“Rain?” Banks queried, only now realizing that it had started to drizzle. He had been so focused on the task at hand the change of weather hadn’t registered with him at all.

Simon was brought back from contemplating the elements with a jolt when Ellison kicked the dumpster. “Fuck!” 

Holding both hands up placatingly, Simon tried to get Jim to focus on the job they had to do, instead of his anger. “Hey, take it easy, Detective. Let’s think about this a moment. What would Sandburg tell you to do?”

Ellison looked at him incredulously. “I can’t believe you asked me that, Simon!”

“Humor me.”

“Fuck.”

“Well come on, Jim! He’s the expert in this stuff - you said it yourself! Use what he taught you.” Trying to remember what he’d seen Sandburg do, Simon attempted, “Okay, forget about smell. What about your other senses? What can you find out?”

Jim took a deep breath, then moved back to the dumpster and climbed in. After a moment’s searching, he said, “I know where he got his change of clothes. There’s an open plastic bag in here; looks like it was meant to go to Goodwill but got dumped instead. It’s full of men’s clothes; pants, shirts, even shoes. Not his usual style, but they’re reasonably clean. Guess he got lucky.”

“Or he planned ahead and put it there,” Simon pointed out. 

A few moments continued fruitless searching saw a dispirited Ellison rise out of the muck. “There’s nothing, Simon. Nothing left to track him by, as far as my senses are concerned. He could be anywhere in the city by now.”

“Or out of it,” Simon remarked.

Frustrated, dispirited, and now getting very, very wet in the relentless drizzle, the two men trudged back to the warmth of the Captain’s car.

***

The trail was cold, and there was little else that they could do that night. 

Ellison went home to his empty loft, averting his eyes from the closed doors of Sandburg’s former room. Bitterness burned in his throat. Too drained and heartsick to eat, he went straight to bed, where he lay staring sightlessly at the ceiling, sure he wouldn’t be able to sleep despite his bone-deep exhaustion.

Sandburg’s betrayal ate at him, consuming what peace of mind he might have hoped to find in rest, however imperfect it might be. It was as if two different Blairs existed in his memory – his friend, partner and guide, someone to rely on, to trust with his life; and the callous stranger who had committed robbery, and used his superior knowledge of Jim’s senses against him in agonizing and humiliating ways, as if he was a rat in a maze.

Paradoxically, he wished the former were here to tell him how to deal with the latter.

He knew Simon didn’t –  _couldn’t_  – comprehend the depth of Jim’s anger and hurt at what Sandburg had done. But this betrayal went far deeper than Simon could ever imagine. Jim had invested far too much of himself in his partnership with Sandburg, which had morphed fairly quickly from a professional arrangement into what he’d experienced as an unusually profound friendship. Jim had trusted Blair with aspects of himself that no one else had ever been permitted to get close to. Knowing that Blair had insight into his each and every weakness, and was apparently prepared to use those weaknesses against him, cut him to the quick with humiliation and dread. So far it had been his sensory weaknesses which had been used as a weapon. But where would it end? Blair was a consummate psychologist. In what other ways could he torment and humiliate Jim, if he so chose?

Jim had been taken in by Blair from the first moment they met, and apparently been played for a complete and utter fool. If Sandburg really was part of some covert conspiracy, as all the evidence suggested, he’d deceived Jim from the beginning. And Jim had practically handed Sandburg his heart and soul on a plate, warming toward the likeable and courageous young anthropologist, treating the younger man almost like a favored younger brother, believing himself, somewhat naïvely, to be some kind of a mentor to Sandburg, like he’d been to Danny Choi.

His thoughts spiraled around and around, finding no respite. He was unaware of the moment he slipped from waking nightmare into slumber but, between one blink and the next, he found jungle surrounding him, and he growled deep in his throat. The one he sought, the betrayer, was nearby, manifested in the pained yelps and scrabbling sounds of the treacherous creature trying to escape.

Seeking, he moved toward the frantic whine and rustling of leaves, gliding with a warrior’s grace through the lush rainforest vegetation. The wolf, when he unerringly came upon it, was pawing the dirt, trying to free itself. One of its hind legs was caught in a vicious trap, the jaws of which were biting deep into its flesh. The gray fur was stained with the wolf’s own heart’s blood. A part of Jim twisted in horror at the cruel damage to the animal, but another, darker aspect to his soul crowed in satisfied glee. This was no more than it deserved.

The wolf lifted its head, detecting its adversary’s approach. It bared its teeth in fury; but the stench of its fear was rank in the air, and Jim was not deceived by the wolf’s posturing. As he got closer, the wolf snapped out at him, its jaws barely brushing his skin, keeping him at bay. No matter how hard Jim tried, he couldn’t get close.

Then the wolf’s assault ceased abruptly, its attention diverted, as a sound from the distance rent the air. Another wolf, howling in anguish, somewhere far away. And, hearing it, the trapped wolf howled in return, its antagonism transmogrified into stark desperation.

Jim’s eyes snapped open, his heart pounding; the jungle obliterated, the dream ended. But in his mind he still heard the fading echo of that pitiful cry.

***

It was three more days of dead ends and frustrated anger on Ellison’s part before they picked up Sandburg’s trail again. And, to his chagrin, Jim’s sentinel senses had nothing to do with it. 

The antiquities case had stalled since the night Sandburg had first disappeared. There had been no further robberies and, with no new leads to go on – other than the secret suspicions Ellison and Banks held about Sandburg’s involvement – there was little to be done apart from damage control. The press had unanimously assumed that the robbers had left State so they - thankfully - backed off a little, and that view was also prevalent among the other Major Crime detectives who had been working the case. Those directly affected by the robberies all seemed likely to benefit from vast insurance payouts and, in the light of that, the direct heat on Simon from the Mayor’s Office receded somewhat in favor of soundbites and politicking about general levels of crime. There was, after all, an election on the horizon.

In the meantime, Ellison and Banks hoarded their secret, hoping against hope that the missing person bulletin would yield some information about where Sandburg had gone to ground, although neither man held out much hope. It was likely he was long gone out of Cascade by now.

But suddenly, miraculously, they got a break. Simon Banks passed by Ellison’s desk, putting on his coat as he went. “Let’s roll, Detective,” he said, his face grim, and Ellison followed without a word, knowing instinctively that this was about his missing partner.

As they sped in the Captain’s car to the scene, Banks updated him. “It was Officer Ratner from Patrol who spotted him, Jim. According to him, Sandburg is on the east end of Regent Street. He’s been there for at least half an hour, asking for handouts. Ratner and his partner are still watching him. He doesn’t seem to have spotted them.”

“Begging?” Jim was incredulous.

“That’s what Ratner said.”

Ellison was shaking his head. “Stop the car.” 

“What?”

“Stop the car, damn it!”

As Simon pulled into the curb, he turned to Ellison. “What the hell is going on Jim? I thought you wanted to catch him!”

“I’m through with playing his damned games, Simon. He’s taunting me. Playing with me, like a cat with a mouse. This is just another trick to get me to track him. Another chance for him to mess with my senses.”

“So what do you suggest we do? Because short of making this official and having the patrol officers arrest him, it has to be you and I who go after him. There’s no other way to do this and keep it quiet.”

Jim’s face hid whatever emotion was currently driving him. “Look, Simon. They don’t have to arrest him. There’s no warrant out, just a missing person’s report. Can’t you spin them some tale, say he’s had a breakdown or something? Get them to apprehend him for his own safety, then we’ll go and take over?”

Looking reluctant, Simon did what Ellison asked and, while the officers on the scene went off to do what they had been ordered, Simon started the car and drove closer, parking within a block of where the action was taking place. They waited impatiently until Ratner’s partner, Dante, came on to the radio.  _“Son of a bitch, sir. We lost him!”_  He sounded incredulous.

Banks and Ellison exchanged a look. “We’ll be right there, officer,” Banks declared.

A moment later, the two of them launched themselves out of the car the second it had pulled up alongside the patrol car. Ratner was sitting sideways in the front seat, hunched over, his partner standing solicitously over him. “What the hell happened?” Banks demanded as he approached.

Ratner lifted bloodshot eyes to the Captain. “It was the damnedest thing, sir,” he said shakily. I walked over, non-threatening, trying to be reassuring, you know? He looked terrible - dirty, and he stank. I guess he’s been sleeping rough. I got his attention, introduced myself. I always got on okay with Sandburg, thought I could get him to trust me.” He drew a shaky breath. “Anyway, I was almost close enough to touch. He smiled at me, and I thought I was getting through. Then he lifted his hand, and the next thing, I was seeing stars before my eyes.”

His partner took over. “I saw it from here, sir. It was some kind of hand-held strobe light. He flashed it in Ratner’s eyes, real close. It blinded him, and Sandburg was gone before I could get over there.”

“Why the hell didn’t you pursue him?” Ellison growled menacingly.

Dante looked at him nervously. “I’m sorry sir,” he replied. “My partner was down. I had no idea how serious it was. By the time I’d checked on him it was too late and Sandburg had gotten clean away.”

Ratner was looking green. “I suffer from migraine, detective. Flashing light, especially strobe light, brings it on.” he inhaled again, shakily, as though he was trying to keep from throwing up. “I guess he got me real good.”

Ellison was staring off into space, the muscle in his jaw jumping. The strobe light had evidently been meant for him. Banks glanced at him, then looked back at the two officers. “Dante, take your partner home,” he directed. “I’ll clear it with your captain. There’s nothing more you can do here.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Ratner said weakly, as he folded his legs into the car. Dante closed the car door, then as he moved around to get in the driver’s side, Ratner rolled down the window. Pain filled eyes squinted up at the captain, as though he was having trouble focusing. “Sir, Sandburg looked rough,” he said. “Whatever’s going on with him, it ain’t good. I… I know Blair, from around the station. We’ve gone for coffee together - my college degree is in anthropology, so we had something in common. He looked on the edge. Something real strange is going on with him.”

Ellison gave no sign that he had heard, but Banks nodded. “Thanks for your assessment, Officer.”

As the patrol car drove off, Ellison muttered, “He’s on the edge all right.” Cold blue eyes fixed themselves on Banks. “And the next time I see him, I’m gonna push him off!”

***

It had been close. Far too close. It was sheer luck that the officer who had tried to apprehend him had been Dave Ratner. Blair had known about Dave’s tendency to suffer from light-triggered migraine, as they’d talked about it over coffee, while discussing alternative remedies. The strobe would have temporarily blinded anyone, although most likely only momentarily. On Ratner the effects had been far more devastating, allowing Blair the crucial extra seconds he needed to get away.

He’d hated hurting Dave like that, but he’d had no choice. And he’d loathed having to beg for coins, knowing the risk he was taking by standing out so blatantly in the open. But since he’d been divested of the remains of his meager stash by a street thug with a knife yesterday, he’d had absolutely no choice.

Blair huddled further into the doorway where he had gone to ground, shivering with hunger and cold, and looked at the pitiful handful of coins in his palm. Thirty-five cents - just enough to make the call. Shakily Blair arose, pulling his foul smelling coat further around his aching shoulders, and headed off to find a call box.

***

They had been driving around the area for about half an hour when Ellison motioned to Banks by means of an upheld hand. Silently, and without question, Banks pulled in and killed the engine.

Extending his hearing, Ellison focused in on the voice he had heard. Sandburg’s voice. It appeared he was talking on the phone.  _“How much longer, man?”_ he was saying.  _“I got robbed yesterday, got the last of my money stolen. I had to beg for more, and I almost got caught by the cops just now. You gotta help me out here, man.”_  His voice was tinged with naked desperation and, listening intently, Ellison got out of the car and began to edge cautiously towards where it was coming from, Banks a silent shadow at his back.

Ellison didn’t hear what the voice at the other end said, his focus being on approaching Sandburg without being spotted. But evidently the reply did not please the fugitive. “C’mon, man! Please! You’ve had your fun, revenge, whatever it is, okay? You wanted to make this hard - I’m telling you, you’ve done that. Congratulations.” A pause while the other was speaking, and Ellison could see Blair now. He was standing in the phone booth, his back to the approaching detective. Ellison smiled with cold satisfaction as he continued to sneak closer.

“Look,” Sandburg’s voice lowered. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, okay? I’m trying my best here. I’m doing what you told me to do. But how much longer is this gonna go on? Because it’s only a matter of time until I get caught.”

Whatever the reply was, the conversation appeared to be over. Sandburg replaced the receiver and turned his head - straight into Ellison’s fist. 

“Yep,” said Ellison, cradling bruised knuckles as he stood over Sandburg’s unmoving body, which was now slumped unconscious at the detective’s feet. “You were right about that. Time’s up, Chief.”

***

“I don’t like this Jim. I don’t like this at all.” Simon’s misgivings were close to forcing him to call this whole thing off. This smacked of the type of criminal behavior he had joined the force to stamp out. “The kid is unconscious. He should not be lying trussed up in the trunk of my car, for Christ’s sakes!”

Ellison remained impassive, his gaze focused out of the windshield as they traveled along the unlit country road. “I’m monitoring his vitals. Any sign of a problem, we can get him out in seconds. But he’s a slippery bastard. I don’t trust him inside here with us, unconscious or not.”

Banks lifted his hand momentarily from the steering wheel, taking a long draw on his cigar. For once Ellison hadn’t protested about him lighting up, for which Simon was profoundly grateful. His stress levels were through the roof - he needed all the help he could get. “Are you sure that’s why?” he asked Ellison belligerently. “Because from where I’m sitting it looks like you trying to get even. Like some kind of twisted revenge.”

Ellison smiled coldly, still not looking at Banks. “I haven’t even started on revenge yet, Simon,” he said coldly, and Banks suppressed a shudder. Christ. What the hell was he getting himself into? This was a side of Ellison he had always been peripherally aware of, but thankfully, up to now, never seen. Frankly, it scared the hell out of him.

As well as all of that, he still wasn’t as convinced as Jim of Sandburg’s guilt, and the sentinel’s conspiracy theory was beginning to seem to him more like paranoia. Sure, the kid had been acting oddly since he had gone on the run, but it could well be that the pressure of his work had gotten to him, like Professor Granger had suggested. God knows, Sandburg had been to hell and back during the time he had worked with Ellison, experiencing things no civilian should have to go through. It was perfectly feasible that he could have cracked under the combined pressure. 

A glance at Ellison’s impassive face stalled any further argument. Until Jim discovered what had been motivating Sandburg’s behavior, it was clear that nothing would convince him of any innocent motives. And his own misgivings notwithstanding, Simon could see no rational explanation for any of it. He had to accept, therefore, that there was every chance that Ellison was right, and that Sandburg was far more dangerous an adversary than he looked.

Putting his foot down on the empty road, Banks thrust his deep reservations to one side and concentrated on getting them to their destination as quickly as possible.

***

The first thing Blair became aware of was the vibration, rattling through his bones. He was cold, his joints numb, and he couldn’t move his arms, which seemed to be restrained behind him. Opening his eyes to blackness, he began to hyperventilate, feeling as though he couldn’t get enough air in his lungs. Disorientation added to his panic, and his aching head pounded suddenly, forcing an answering reaction in his stomach. “Oh god,” he groaned, swallowing bile wretchedly as he registered where he most likely was. The smell of motor oil and a vague aroma of exhaust fumes confirmed his suspicion. He was in the trunk of a moving car.

But whose car? He tried to remember how he wound up here, but all he knew was that he had been speaking on the phone, calling in as he had been instructed. A vague recollection of a faceless fist, appearing out of nowhere and sending him into oblivion, rose in his mind. Oh god. What had gone wrong? Fear rushed through him, at the thought that he, too, could now be back in that sadistic bastard’s hands. 

His fear of that, his current helplessness and the blackness in this confined space, wrung a memory of terror out of him. A fifteen year old memory so potent, he shuddered with its intensity. And his rebellious stomach could not withstand its onslaught, as he vomited horribly and messily all over himself and his surroundings.

Almost instantly, the motion stopped, and he felt the vibration as two car doors opened and slammed shut. He cowered as the trunk was flung open, and two pairs of hands reached down and pulled him bodily out of the mess he was lying in.

“Please…” he hardly had the breath to plead for his life, but he tried nevertheless.

“Jesus Christ.” Tears of relief came into Blair’s eyes at the familiarity of that voice. “Easy kid, I’ve got you,” Simon carried on, as Blair relaxed infinitesimally. He felt himself placed on the ground at the roadside, having hardly the strength of a baby to resist. He was laid down, and the same big, gentle hands turned him on his side. Something warm, smelling - in an oddly comforting way - of cigars, covered him - Simon’s coat.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Simon’s voice was angry and, although Blair got the impression that anger wasn’t directed at him, he winced at the tone. “He doesn’t deserve to be treated like this, no matter who he is or what you think he’s done! Hell, if we’d put him under arrest, we would have gotten him medical attention, not locked him in the trunk! I can’t believe I let you talk me into this!”

“I already told you why.” Blair’s blood ran cold at the hardness in that second voice. Jim’s voice. “He got away too many times. I don’t want it happening again.”

“Look at him!” Simon hissed, and Blair flinched as a hand fell on his head. The touch gentled, became reassuring, and he shuddered, holding back tears, knowing he did not deserve Simon’s kindness or pity. “He is in no shape to do anything right now, let alone escape.”

Blair held his breath, waiting for the answer. When it came, Ellison’s voice was dangerously low. “All right,” he said. “What do you suggest we do?”

Simon’s hand fell away, and Blair imagined him striding over to Ellison, and towering over him. Not many people were capable of cowing Jim, but Simon was more than able to do so when he had to. “Here’s how it’s going to go down,” he heard Simon say, his voice low and uncompromising. “We’re only half an hour from the cabin. You drive. I’ll sit in the back seat with Blair, and keep an eye on him. You leave him to me, detective. And that is not a suggestion. It’s an order.”

There was silence and, for a moment, Blair thought Jim would argue. The thought of Jim insisting that he be put back in the trunk again almost wrung a sob from him, but he managed to hold it back. Then, finally, Jim answered. “Okay. But he stays cuffed.”

“For now.” But Simon didn’t sound happy about that. “There’s a blanket, on the back seat. Get it for me, will you? And the bottled water.”

***

It was a good thing the route was so familiar that Jim was able to drive practically on autopilot towards their destination. Because his mind was emphatically not on the road.

Simon had been unaccountably gentle with Sandburg, cleaning up the vomit that had soiled his clothes and hair as best he could with the bottled water, then wrapping their fugitive up in a blanket before helping him into the back seat of the car. Throughout it all, Sandburg had remained passive and compliant, refusing to meet the eyes of either Simon or Jim, and not uttering a word. Now their prisoner was slumped sideways on the seat, his eyes closed, his breathing even and slow, and his hands still cuffed behind him. Simon, watchful beside him, occasionally adjusted the blanket which covered him, and every time Jim caught that motion in the rear view mirror, he marveled at the incongruous protectiveness of the gesture.

In truth, Jim was disgusted with himself. Sandburg had been a shuddering, stinking wreck when they’d pulled him out of the trunk. That Jim’s anger had blinded him to the unnecessary cruelty of confining Sandburg in that way, when he had been unconscious with a head injury, was something which Jim was thoroughly ashamed of. Simon was right - they would never have treated any regular perp that way.

His turmoil was not helped by the fact that Sandburg could not possibly look any less like a covert agent than he did right now. And Jim’s certainty of that fact, which had buoyed up his determination the past few days, was beginning to falter, leaving even more questions in its wake. 

But appearances, he told himself firmly, ruthlessly casting his doubts aside, could be deceiving. Until they got the truth out of Sandburg, he had to remember that fact, or risk being the victim of even more deceit.

He was aware of serious brown eyes regarding him in the mirror and, taking a breath, he met their reflection with his own. “How’s he doing?” he asked quietly.

“He’ll be okay,” Simon answered, his expression uncompromising and his disapproval of Jim’s behavior still clear.  _No thanks to you_  were the unspoken words, and Jim had no choice but to agree with that assessment. He nodded in understanding, wordlessly accepting responsibility for his actions, and turned his eyes back to the road. 

***

It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Simon’s cabin was remote enough, secure enough, that they could take Sandburg there, and keep him there while they questioned him about who he was working for and what he hoped to gain from his actions. But Simon was no longer sure he had made the right call from the start. It seemed that Sandburg would have been better off in conventional custody than in the hands of his friends, and for that he was deeply ashamed.

But no, Ellison had insisted that this be kept off the record, because of possible government involvement and the sensitive knowledge of his hyper-senses. And he - high flying police Captain that he was - had allowed himself to be led along by the nose. He’d assumed that the sentinel knew best when it came to matters of his senses and covert investigations, and he’d permitted the kid to wake up ill and terrified out of his wits in the car trunk.

It ended here. 

Glancing again at Sandburg, who was slumped beside him on the seat, huddled under a blanket, Simon took in his appearance. Sandburg stank - over and above the vomit which he had been lying in. His clothes were filthy, and his normally well groomed hair was a matted mess, tied back in a loose pony tail. He evidently hadn’t shaved since he’d been on the run, the days-old growth of beard making him look like an unfamiliar, older stranger.

Under those superficial aspects of his appearance, further things were clear. Sandburg was pale and gaunt, and there were bruises under the dirt, as though he’d been in a street fight. Simon suspected he hadn’t been eating much the past few days, or getting much sleep, on the streets as he had apparently been. And he knew now exactly what Ratner had meant when he had described Blair as being ‘on the edge’ - Sandburg had the exhausted look of a man who had reached the end of the line, and had nothing left to live for. 

They’d searched Sandburg while he was unconscious, and his pocket contents had been meager. A couple of cents of loose change, his Swiss army penknife, the dog whistle that had so tormented Jim, and a pocket-sized piece of equipment which Jim had informed him was a portable strobe light. 

If Sandburg was in on the robberies, as Jim claimed he was, he certainly had not profited from it in any way that Simon could see. And if he was a spook, what kind of government agency let their field operatives run around unarmed, and in such a lousy, penniless state? Absolutely none of Jim’s suspicions made any sense, now they had seen the pitiful mess that Sandburg had become.

Glancing forward at Jim, who was sitting in the driver’s seat, he pondered his other problem. Ellison had for too long been letting his blind anger dominate the way they played this, refusing to consider any other scenario than the one which allowed him his righteous rage against Sandburg’s apparent betrayal. But Simon was determined that, from now on, Ellison would no longer have the upper hand. They might not be dealing with this by the book, but from here on in he would damned well make sure that Sandburg was treated humanely, and given the benefit of the doubt. 

***

Blair was vaguely aware that the car had stopped moving, and he started when a hand fell onto his shoulder, snapping open his eyes. Simon’s face was inches from his own. “Blair,” the Captain said. “Wake up. We’re here.”

Here? Here, where? Blair wanted to ask, but the car door he was leaning on opened and forestalled the question. Glancing that way, he saw Jim standing just outside, his face as forbidding as Blair had ever seen it. “Get out of the car, Sandburg,” Jim ordered, his tone uncompromising. Hating himself for doing so, Blair glanced nervously at Simon, in a mute appeal for reassurance.

“It’s okay, son. Go on,” Simon urged and, ashamed that his turbulent emotions had been so easily read, Blair reluctantly complied, getting out awkwardly with his hands still cuffed behind him. Jim grabbed his arm as he stumbled, and held him upright while Simon exited the car on the other side and came around to join them, a flashlight in his hand. As the beam splayed around, Blair realized where they were - Simon’s weekend cabin in the Cascade National Forest.

By the time they had walked up the front steps and entered the cabin, he was feeling a little more awake. Awake enough to show a bit of his usual contrary spirit. “Look, this good-cop, bad-cop routine isn’t going to work on me, okay? I know you both too well.”

“Funny,” Jim replied, his tone indicating that he didn’t think it was funny at all. “We thought we knew  _you_  pretty well. Seems we got that wrong, huh?”

“Jim,” Simon warned, before Blair had a chance to retort. “Save it.”

“Yes, sir,” Jim agreed easily, then, still holding Blair’s arm in a tight grip, pulled him inside as soon as Simon got the door open and the light on, and hauled him towards the single bedroom in the back.

Blair planted his feet. “Look man, I need to go. You know, ‘go’? As in piss? And if you lock me in there man, I’ll just do it in my pants.”

Jim stopped, his demeanor thawing not one iota. Then he changed direction, pushing Blair toward the cabin’s bathroom. When they reached the door, he pushed Blair against it, while he unlocked the handcuffs. Then he opened the door and pushed Blair inside. “Don’t lock it,” he ordered, before closing it between them.

Alone at last, Blair took a deep breath. And another. He quickly used the head, and looked longingly at the shower, grimacing at the stink of the clothes he had pulled from the dumpster days before. Moving to the sink, he turned on the faucet. And as the water ran noisily down the drain, hopefully masking his movements almost as effectively as white noise, he went swiftly to the window and opened it, pulling himself up onto the sill and swinging his legs around and out. Breathing a silent sigh of relief, he dropped to the ground.

Only to come face-to-face with Simon, who was waiting right outside.

***

Jim watched expressionlessly, as Simon came in through the door pushing the reluctant Sandburg in front of him. Then he reached for his handcuffs. Blair shrank back, Simon bumping into him from behind, the prospect of being confined again obviously bothering him. “Please, man. Don’t. I won’t try to get away again. I swear.”

“No shit, Sandburg,” Jim answered, as he placed the cuff on Blair’s right wrist. “Turn around.”

“Hey, c’mon, Jim. If you have to do this, can’t you at least cuff my hands in front? My shoulders are aching, man. Simon,” Blair appealed to the man behind him, eyes big, “please.”

Jim ignored his plea, snapping on the other cuff, and Simon watched grimly. Then Jim hauled Blair off into the bedroom, where he pushed him down into the straight-backed wooden chair in the corner of the room. A second pair of cuffs were produced, and Jim secured Blair’s right ankle to the chair leg, around the supporting cross bar so that he couldn’t slip it free. “Jim, c’mon.” Blair pleaded. “This is uncomfortable. And my head’s killing me, man.”

Jim just gave him an unreadable look, then walked back out of the room to join Simon, closing the door behind him.

***

Simon watched worriedly as Jim re-emerged from the bedroom. “Jim,” he said pointedly, “I don’t want you terrorizing him.”

Jim guffawed. “Give me a break, Simon. He’s never been the slightest bit intimidated by me. And that window stunt he pulled? You really think that’ll be his last attempt? I’m telling you, I’m in more danger from him, with what he knows about my senses. Don’t make the mistake of underestimating him, or falling for that innocent routine.”

Simon reluctantly concurred, although he silently vowed to step in and curtail any excessive vindictiveness displayed by Jim. And he made some provisos. “You are not interrogating him alone, detective. And that is final. We are so far out on a limb with this there’s nothing but a hundred foot drop below us, and a fast track to the unemployment line.”

Jim nodded. “Understood, sir.”

Simon wasn’t finished. “And what about the concussion? You hit him so hard, he was out for half an hour. He should be lying down.”

Jim looked at him incredulously. “Who the hell appointed you his ‘blessed protector’?”

“His what?”

“Never mind.” Jim took a big breath, let it out. “Look, Simon. I know I screwed up back there. I let my anger get the better of me, and I regret that. But I’m back in control, and he’s fine now. I checked him over with my senses. His pupils are equal and reactive, he’s coherent, and basically he has a hard skull - he’s proved that in the past. He’s okay. If he wasn’t, I’d do this differently. So, he has a bit of a headache?” He shrugged. “Big deal. I had worse than that when he maced me.”

Simon shook his head, unconvinced. “This is not about getting even, Jim. This is about getting information. I want you to remember that.”

“I will, sir.”

***

They left Sandburg alone to stew for a while, Jim keeping his senses open to make sure their captive didn’t have a relapse of his earlier sickness or make another bid for escape. Sitting out on the couch, Jim closed his eyes, his breathing slow, while Simon busied himself firing up the wood stove and making coffee from the supplies that he kept stored at the cabin.

Jim couldn’t pinpoint the moment when the sound of Simon pottering around in the kitchen, and Sandburg’s unhappy puffs of breath from the bedroom, transmogrified into waking dream, as he drifted into the same scenario that he’d visualized several nights ago. 

Roaming through an ethereal jungle, Jim was drawn straight to the clearing where the gray wolf was trapped.

The wolf gnawed at its own leg where it was stuck in the dreadful metal jaws, trying frantically to bite itself free despite the terrible wounds it was inflicting with its own teeth. In the distance, the anguished howling of a second wolf could be heard, and Jim knew, without understanding how, that it was from the same pack as the one in the trap. The gray wolf lifted its head, hearing the call, and frantically renewed its efforts to get free, to go to that one’s aid. 

Moved by pity this time for the animal’s plight, Jim moved forward, meaning to pull apart the confining jaws and free it. But the wolf snapped at him, keeping him at bay, its spittle flecked with blood. He couldn’t get close.   
Then he felt the change begin, and the dream took a different turn.

Power coursed through him. His senses sharpened, refined. His limbs tingled, morphing into sleek, black, furred legs supporting a graceful, deadly body.

Fearless now, the panther ignored the fangs and claws of the wolf, which scoured his flesh in terror. Lowering his powerful jaws, he wrenched open the brutal trap with his teeth. Freed, the wolf backed warily out of its prison, watching him distrustfully. Then it turned, and limped painfully towards the sound of the other wolf. 

But he, being swifter and stronger, easily halted the wolf. He leapt after it, a single powerful bound. The wolf sank to the ground as he overpowered it, clamping his jaws around the wolf’s throat in threat, the tips of his teeth barely piercing the skin. 

After a brief, futile struggle, the wolf lay on its back, and bared its belly in abject submission, having no other choice but to submit to the greater strength of the panther.

Recognizing the wolf’s capitulation, the panther’s jaws slowly opened. The wolf whimpered, as the panther carefully licked clean the wounds left by his fangs on its throat.

_CLANG!_

Startled back into the real world, Jim leapt to his feet, reaching for his gun. It was a second or two before Simon’s voice penetrated. “Hey, Jim, take it easy! I dropped a pan, that’s all. Relax.”

Letting out a breath in relief, Jim ran a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m more tired than I thought.” The memory of the dream was leaving him, but its disturbing images persisted in a sense of wrongness. In a flash of sudden insight, Jim extended his senses once again to the bedroom in which they had left Sandburg. Their captive’s heartbeat was racing, his breathing labored. And there was a new smell, one that hadn’t been there before - the copper tang of fresh blood. “What the hell?” Jim exclaimed, rushing to open the door.

A heartbeat behind him, Simon bumped into his back as he stopped in the doorway, transfixed with horror.

Sandburg had somehow managed to toe off his right shoe and sock - the foot which was secured to the chair. Blood ran down his ankle, where he had scraped it raw, trying vainly to slip the handcuff off over his foot. Lifting pain-filled eyes to the men in the doorway, he glared angrily at them.

“Jesus, Chief,” Jim breathed. “What the hell are you doing?” Reaching into his pocket for the key, he moved quickly in and knelt down, gingerly unlocking the cuff. Carefully, he took Sandburg’s lower leg in his hands. “Simon,” he ordered over his shoulder, “Get some hot water. Cloths. Antiseptic.”

As Simon quickly left to do Jim’s bidding, Sandburg jerked his leg out of Ellison’s grasp. “Get the hell off of me,” he demanded. “What right have you got to keep me here like this, huh? Police brutality, man. Just like my mo… like I was always told. Get your hands off of me, you jerk!” 

It was clear that they were not dealing with a rational man and, still rattled by the dream he had just woken from, Jim was out of patience. Rising, he seized Sandburg by the shirt front and shook him, his face inches from the seated man’s. “Listen, you little shit,” he snarled. “I don’t care if you bleed to death. That was a stupid stunt. If you think it’s going to get you any sympathy, forget it. You are not getting out of here until we get some answers. Starting with who you really are, and who you’re working for. And once we get that, ‘Tommy’, I’m gonna boot your ass straight to jail for robbery and assaulting a police officer.”

A shudder ran through Sandburg, despite his defiance. “Don’t call me that.”

“I’ll call you what the hell I want. Hey, how about ‘Judas’, huh? That suit you better, Tommy-boy?”

Jim was totally unprepared for Sandburg’s reaction. With a roar, the smaller man surged forward, his head butting hard into Jim’s face. For a moment, Ellison saw stars, and that split second of disorientation was enough for Sandburg to win free of his grasp. 

But Ellison had been floored by more dangerous adversaries than Sandburg. Blair might have the upper hand when it came to Jim’s senses, but in a physical fight, Jim had the advantage. Especially when Sandburg had both hands cuffed behind his back. 

Sandburg had hurled himself towards the window, seemingly unconcerned that it was closed, and Ellison had no doubt that he was desperate enough to throw himself bodily through the glass given half an opportunity. With no time to spare, Ellison launched himself at Sandburg’s back in a flying tackle, bringing them both crashing heavily to the floor. The breath went out of Sandburg with a ‘whoof’ as the bigger man landed heavily on top of him. 

They were still there, Jim breathing hard, and Sandburg lying still underneath him trying to recover his breath, when Simon returned a moment later. “What the hell…” the Captain began.

“Let me go.” The voice underneath Jim was quiet, desperate; all bravado fled. “Please, man. You don’t understand.” When Jim didn’t answer, Blair carried on, his voice cracking. “Please Jim. I know I’ve let you down. I know I’ve fucked up. But I’m begging you, if you ever cared about me, even a little bit. If you ever…” his breath hitched, and he swallowed, breathing hard. Then he went on, “I can’t be here. I can’t be with you. If he finds out, he’ll kill her, man.” 

As Sandburg’s plea dissolved into helpless, hitching sobs, all resistance having fled his body, Jim met Simon’s eyes across the room, finding a similar expression of mixed horror and bafflement. And, god help them, pity.

***

After his brief crying jag, the fight seemed to have gone out of Sandburg, although Jim and Simon were taking no chances. The handcuffs around his wrists, tightened enough to prevent him from attempting to slip them off and doing himself more damage, now secured his arms to the head of the bed, around one of the narrow decorative wooden dowels. He lay quiescent while Jim cleaned and dressed the self-inflicted wound on his ankle, with Simon looking on worriedly.

As Jim worked, Sandburg asked suddenly, panic in his eyes, “Simon? What time is it? I don’t know how long I was out of it, man. Is it still Thursday?”

“Yeah, kid. It’s Thursday.” Simon glanced at his watch. “It’s nearly seven-thirty in the evening.”

Sandburg closed his eyes briefly. “Shit.” Then opened them and looked pleadingly at Simon. “Look, I don’t have a lot of time. I have to be back in Cascade before midnight.”

“You’re not going anywhere, Sandburg,” Jim said, securing the last piece of surgical tape. “Except maybe inside a cell once we’ve gotten the truth out of you.”

Blair took a deep breath, focusing on the ceiling. “Look, Jim, I know you’re angry with me…”

“Angry doesn’t cover it,” Jim cut him off. “You lied. You lied from day one about who you were, what you wanted from me. You did those robberies, taunting me with your knowledge about my senses. You sprayed fucking  _mace_  in my face. You tried your damnedest to make a fool out of me, with this ‘homeless’ charade, goading me to chase you all over Cascade.”

“It’s not what you think, man,” Blair protested. “I never lied to you before last week - not about who I am or any of it. And I never did those robberies.” 

Jim laughed shortly. “Riiiiight,” he drawled. “And we’re supposed to just believe that and let you walk away.”

“I’m telling the truth, man!” Blair fixed wide eyes on Jim. “The only time I wasn’t honest with you was… was this past week, okay? Something… something happened, and I couldn’t tell you what was going on.”

Jim sneered, unmoved by Sandburg’s seemingly false sincerity. “What, your handlers changed your orders? Suddenly they wanted you to field-test your lab rat, huh?”

Confusion passed over Blair’s face. “My… what? My ‘handlers’? What the hell are you talking about?”

The clear and utter lack of comprehension on Blair’s face, and the lack of telltale signs of lying, took Jim totally by surprise. “You trying to tell me you’re not working for the Agency? That you’re not a spook?”

“A  _what_?” Blair lifted his head off the bed and looked at Jim incredulously. “Spook? You mean a secret agent, right?  _Me_? Oh man...” Blair’s voice tailed off, and he began to laugh suddenly, although the sound had very little real humor in it. “Oh, wow, that’s… you’re joking, right?” When Jim didn’t answer, Blair stopped laughing and peered at him in horror. “You’re not joking!”

“This is no joke, Sandburg,” Jim said tersely. “So why don’t you come clean, huh? It’s not like we’re giving you a choice, here.” He leaned over the bed, his face inches from the prone man’s. “Who are you working for?” 

Sandburg licked lips that seemed to have suddenly gone dry, but he held Jim’s gaze boldly. “If I tell you,” he said, “will you let me go?”

“Not a chance.” 

“C’mon, man,” Blair pleaded, looking once again towards Simon. It seemed their prisoner wasn’t as impervious to the good-cop bad-cop routine as he’d made out, appealing to the kinder of the pair as he was. “I’m in a lot of trouble, just being here with you. I’ll tell you, but you’ve  _got_  to let me go! I’ve  _got_  to be in Cascade by midnight.” His voice wavered. “Simon, please.”

Simon kept his peace, but Jim answered. “You’re right about one thing, Sandburg. You’re in heaps of trouble.” He straightened up, and crooked a finger at Simon. “We’ll talk some more,” he said, as the two of them moved towards the door, “In the morning.”

“Wait!” Sandburg’s frantic shout halted them on the threshold. “Okay, okay! I’ll talk, I’ll tell you everything, okay? Don’t go!”

Jim and Simon exchanged a glance and, as one, they turned and walked back over. Sandburg was wide-eyed with panic. It seemed this midnight deadline – whatever it was – had huge significance.

Sandburg was babbling in his haste to suddenly talk, but not making a lot of sense. “It’s all true, everything I told you before this about me was true, my name, my research, who I am. All of it. But there are things you don’t know about me, man, things  _I_  didn’t know, and it’s all caught up with me like you wouldn’t believe. Though I hope you will. Believe, that is, because if you don’t, Jim, Simon, then I’m in the worst mess of my life, and that’s saying something, but not only me, man-”

“Quiet!” Jim’s imperative yell put a stop to the torrent of words. And into the silence that followed he once again asked the question he needed the answer to, carefully enunciated. “Who are you working for?”

Blair closed his eyes briefly, as if in pain. Then he opened them and looked straight at Jim. “My father,” he said simply.

The answer was so unexpected that both Jim and Simon could only stare at Sandburg in shock.

Finally Jim found his voice. “You told me you didn’t know who your father was,” he accused.

Sandburg looked away, his expression pained. “I forgot, all right? I forgot.”

“Sure you did,” Jim spat out in disgust. “Like you forgot you were my partner.”

“Jim,” Simon said warningly. Then, looking at Blair, he asked, “Who are you really?”

Blair didn’t meet their eyes. “I’m Blair Sandburg. I never lied about that. It’s the name I’ve had for as long as I can -  _could_  - remember. But I used to be called something else. Up until I was thirteen, my name was Thomas Buchanan.”

Cautiously, Simon asked, “What happened? Were you adopted?”

“No. My… my mom and me were placed in the Witness Protection Program.”

Simon and Jim exchanged a look. It made a weird kind of sense. Blair’s past had always been shrouded in half-truths and mystery.

“Why?” Jim prompted.

Blair’s answer was almost a whisper. “To keep us safe from him. My father. Joe Buchanan.”

“To keep you safe from him, why?” Simon was watching Blair carefully; watching, like Jim, for signs of deception.

“It… It was because of me, man. I saw him do something when I was a kid. Something really bad. I testified against him, and he was put away. He’s dangerous, man. And he hates me for what I did, for betraying him. He… Apparently, he made threats, and the Feds took them seriously. They moved Naomi and me up here, to start a new life. And I… I forgot about it.”

“How the hell do you ‘forget’ something like that?” Jim accused.

“I just did, all right? I just did. Like  _you_  forgot, man,” Blair said pointedly, pleading for Jim’s understanding, “about what you saw when  _you_  were a kid. When your mentor was murdered.” Blair’s voice wavered. “But I remember now.”

“What about the robberies?” Simon asked. “We have physical evidence that links you with the last one. At this stage you’re our only suspect.”

Blair shook his head, processing that. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t do any of them. I admit I helped him prepare for them, so that Jim wouldn’t find any evidence of his identity, but that’s as far as it went.”

“Bullshit,” Jim exploded. “You were there, at the final scene. I could smell you. And I found one of your hairs in the broken glass case.”

Blair shook his head. “I wasn’t there. I swear it.” Then, as something occurred to him, he exhaled. “Shit! He set me up. He set me up! The son of a bitch!”

“Okay,” Jim put in, breaking into Blair’s apparent incredulity. “For the sake of argument, let’s say we believe that your ‘father’ did the robberies, and you merely helped him along. That still makes you an accessory to the crimes, and you’re looking at jail time right there, no matter what. What I want to know is, if you were responsible for putting this guy in jail in the past, why the hell would you work with him now? Because I gotta tell you, ‘Sandburg’ or whatever your name is, from where I’m standing it’s looking like the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. You get what I’m saying?”

“Yeah, I get it.” Sandburg swallowed again, seemingly trying to get himself under control, as though the words he was about to say hurt him. “He’s got my mom,” he finally managed. “He’s got Naomi. He’s going to kill her if I don’t do exactly what he says. And he’ll do it, man. He means it.”

Jim was stunned to silence, but Simon was still in control. “Blair?” he asked, “What exactly have you done for him?”

Blair turned his head to look at Simon, his face oddly guileless. “I had to work on his equipment and clothes, and give him stuff to mislead Jim’s senses at each scene, so that Jim wouldn’t be able to detect him. He was gonna let Naomi go and get out of town when he’d finished the robberies, and leave us alone. I  _swear_  man,” Blair added, looking earnestly at Simon. “I was gonna give myself up as soon as she was safe.” He closed his eyes. “I just want her to be safe.”

But the significance of what Sandburg was implying was not lost on Ellison. “He knows I’m a sentinel, Sandburg,” Jim accused. “You tell him that, huh?”

“No, I did not ‘tell him that’,” Blair retorted, anger clear in his tone. “He already knew, man. He’d worked it out before he even contacted me. Seems like a ‘proud father’ he’s been keeping tabs on me, on my research, the past few years. He’s intelligent. He put two and two together and worked it out.”

“Intelligent. Huh. And me just a big dumb fuck with no more sense than to trust you all those years. ‘Judas’ is right.” Jim rose, hatred in his expression. “You and me, Sandburg, we’re finished. No matter how this goes down.” He looked at Simon. “Excuse me, sir. I need some air.”

Blair had flinched at Jim’s words, and now lay with his eyes closed, his head turned away. Banks broke into his reverie. “Blair,” he asked, a hand falling on the prone man’s arm. “Tell me what’s been going on. Why have you been living on the streets? Why didn’t you come to us - to me, if not Jim - for help?”

Blair’s voice was quiet, full of tightly contained emotion. “There were… conditions attached to my behavior if Jim found out. I had to go on the run. I can’t leave town, and I’m not allowed to approach anyone I know for help. Especially Jim, man, and especially you. And I have to keep calling him at pre-arranged times, until he decides to call me in.” Blair turned his head, and fixed Simon with his desperate gaze. “If he knows I’m here, out of town with you, and that I’ve told you this, she’s already dead. But I had no choice.” He swallowed. “You left me no choice.”

“Why do you have to be back by midnight?”

“I have to call then. Not a minute before, not a minute after. If I miss the deadline, he’ll kill her.” Blair bit his lip, and turned away again. “Please, Simon. Help me,” he whispered. “I can’t let him kill her. He’s… he’s really dangerous, man. You have no idea what he’s capable of.”

Simon patted him on the arm. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said. Then with a heavy heart, he headed out of the room, leaving Sandburg alone. 

God, but he needed a cigar.

***

Simon found Jim outside, leaning on a tree. “So,” Ellison asked, as Simon strolled over pulling a cigar out of his leather cigar case, “you believe that load of bull? ‘My psycho dad made me do it’?”

“As a matter of fact,” said Simon, “I’m inclined to. Sandburg is capable of coming up with a much more plausible story than that. It’s so out there I think it could be true.”

Jim snorted, and Simon lit up. They stood in silence a moment, listening to the night sounds. Then Simon said, “I have a few contacts I can talk to, to verify his story. If Buchanan is Blair’s real name, and he really was placed in the WPP, we’ll know soon enough.”

Jim nodded. “Good.”

A moment later, Simon pinched out his cigar. Jim looked at him quizzically. “It’s the last one,” Simon said ruefully. “I have a feeling I’m going to need the rest later.” He clapped Jim on the shoulder. “You’re doing okay,” he said. “Keep it together, Ellison. The last thing I need is both of you cracking up on me.”

Jim smiled tightly and shook his head as the Captain walked off, already dialing on his cell phone.

It was a tense few hours. Simon pulled in marker after marker, talking to contacts in the FBI and the San Francisco PD both on and off duty. Jim paced panther-like around the perimeter of the property, keeping one ear tuned to their prisoner; determined that his earlier lapse in surveillance would not be repeated. And Blair lay sleepless and miserable, occasionally calling out to his captors, asking to know the time, and begging to be let go. His pleas became more and more frantic as the night wore on.

Finally, as midnight approached, gold was struck. “Jim, I got it,” Simon declared, snapping shut his phone and approaching Jim where he stood watching the clear night sky, impressive in its glory. Jim turned his attention to Banks, as the captain began to relate what he’d found out. “Joe Buchanan used to be a wealthy businessman,” he said, “down in San Francisco. According to what I’ve been told, the guy is a genius. IQ up the wazoo, and with a top college education. When he was building up his import/export business, he didn’t let anyone get in the way of his ambitions - his rivals either ended up working for him, or they left town – by that, read ‘disappeared’. He wound up running a big corporation, and had a reputation for being ruthless. A big-time hard ass.

“He got married to Norma Sanderson in 1968. She was the daughter of a business rival, and just sixteen years old - fourteen years his junior. There were rumors the marriage was ‘arranged’ after a deal went bad between him and her old man. They had one kid. A boy, born in 1969, name of Thomas. 

“Buchanan was a suspect in several murder cases, all of them people who’d crossed him in some way, but the evidence was inconclusive, and the Feds couldn’t get anyone to roll over on him. Then, in 1982, Buchanan’s name was linked to the murder of an accountant, one Samuel Gregory. The guy was found butchered. He’d been tortured to death.

“According to the Fed I talked to, the mother brought Buchanan’s son into the local PD one day. Seems the kid had been having nightmares, and he’d finally given in and told her that he’d seen his father kill somebody. He ended up spilling his guts to the cops. The Feds were called in – his testimony was exactly what they’d been looking for to take Buchanan down.

“The kid was the only witness,” Simon went on. “He was somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be, and he watched while his father butchered and killed Gregory. The Feds finally had what they needed to put Buchanan behind bars. They talked the kid into giving evidence against his father, and seemingly after a lifetime of abuse of both him and his mother from Buchanan senior, the boy decided to go along with it. He managed to hold it together long enough to testify, and his testimony and the evidence recovered from the location the boy led them to put Buchanan away for life. Then, because of specific threats Buchanan made against the boy and the woman, they were placed in Witness Protection.”

“And ended up in Cascade,” Jim added.

“Uh huh. But that’s not all.” Simon sighed. “The guy I spoke to made it his personal concern to see that they were well taken care of. Seems the boy’s story touched him pretty deeply. So he was able to tell me a bit more. Jim, when Blair and Naomi first arrived here, Blair was a mess. He had a breakdown; spent a year as an in-patient in a private psychiatric facility, which the Feds paid for as part of the deal. By the time he was discharged, he had somehow repressed the entire memory of what had happened. He threw himself into his studies - he was academically advanced, even then. Went to Rainier at sixteen, and according to my informant, that was the making of him. He’d banished the past, and jumped headfirst into the present. The Fed stopped watching over him, then. You know the rest.”

“Jesus.” Jim wiped a hand over his face. “Blair said once he’d been in and out of therapy since he was in diapers. I thought he was joking.”

“It’s no joke.”

“No. It isn’t.” Then, frowning, he asked, “So how is it that Buchanan is on the loose?”

“He escaped. It looks like he’d been planning it for months. He’s been on the run for nearly three months, and there have been no leads as to his whereabouts. Until now.”

“How the hell did he know where to find Blair and Naomi after all this time?”

“You got me, Jim. But one thing is clear. This guy is devious and resourceful. And vindictive as hell. If he has Naomi, like Blair says, and he’s gone to all this trouble just to destroy his own son’s life fifteen years after the fact, then we are dealing with one very dangerous son of a bitch.”

A noise tickled Jim’s awareness. He had been so focused on what Simon was saying, his monitoring of Blair had slipped. Now he brought his hearing back into focus. “Oh god,” he said faintly, standing up. “We gotta get back up there. Blair’s freaking out. It’s midnight.” He turned and ran, Banks at his heels.

Nearer to the cabin, Simon could hear it too. Sandburg was yelling; almost screeching, barely coherent demands to let him go, punctuated all the time with heavy bumps and bangs as their captive seemingly threw himself around. The frantic voice was hardly recognizable as Sandburg’s.

Jim reached the door first and threw it open. He was knocked backwards into Simon as the struggling weight of the inmate barreled into him, terror and desperation having lent him the brute strength to somehow wrench himself free of the headboard, splintering free the wooden dowel the cuffs had been locked around. It took the two of them to wrestle him back into the room. 

“Simon,” Jim grunted, barely audible over Blair’s threats. “The bed.” Between the both of them, they managed to haul him onto it. Simon held him there, his weight preventing Sandburg from moving, while Jim held Sandburg’s head between his palms and forced eye contact, making him listen. “Chief! Calm down. Just calm down! We believe you, okay? We know all about Buchanan, and what he did. You’re in time, Blair. You can call him!” Blair stopped fighting, breathing hard, his eyes wide and white like a wild horse. Ellison glanced at Simon. “The cuffs. Get the cuffs off of him.”

As soon as Sandburg’s hands were free, they let him up. He sat painfully, bringing his shaking, blood-covered hands onto his lap - he had once again fought his captivity so hard, he had lacerated his wrists with the cuffs. Wincing in sympathy, Simon watched as Jim pulled out his cell phone and put it in Blair’s hand. “Call him,” Jim said.

Blair tried, but his hands were trembling too much, and slippery with blood. Ellison took it off him. “The number, Sandburg,” he demanded firmly. “What’s the number?” In a halting voice, Blair told him, and Jim dialed, then pressed the phone back in Sandburg’s palm and guided it up to his ear. Thank god thought Simon, not for the first time tonight, that they could get a decent signal out here.

***

Jim shifted, moving to sit next to Sandburg on the bed. Blair didn’t seem to notice; his whole attention was focused on the call. After a few rings, the phone they’d dialed was picked up. “It’s me,” Blair said immediately.

_“Thomas, Thomas, you’re five minutes late.”_

“Please…” Blair began; and Ellison glanced at Simon, whose face was showing the same pity and horror Jim couldn’t help but feel now they knew the true story. “Please, man, don’t hurt her,” Blair pleaded, his voice cracking a little. “I couldn’t get a signal, all right? I tried to call on time.”

_“You’re on a cell phone, Tommy. Whose is it?”_

Blair glanced at Jim who shook his head warningly. “I stole it, okay!” Blair improvised. “Does that make you happy, you son of a bitch?”

_“Don’t get clever, Tommy. Or I’ll shut that smart mouth of yours for good! After I deal with her, that is.”_

Blair swallowed back whatever retort he was no doubt considering. Holding himself together with a visible effort, he asked instead, “Is she all right?”

 _“For the moment.”_  The voice was pitiless.  _“Whether she stays that way depends on you, Tommy-boy. You better not have seen that cop friend of yours. He’s disappeared, according to my sources, no doubt looking for you. You so much as speak one word to him, and remember what I did to Gregory? The same thing will happen to my darling wife.”_

Blair’s heart skipped a beat in horror, and Jim resisted the urge to try and pull the sadistic bastard’s intestines out through the phone. Instead he settled for lifting a hand and squeezing Blair’s shoulder, wanting, despite everything that had happened between them, to convey strength to Blair to help him play out this charade.

“How long,” Blair was asking, “Is this gonna go on, man? You have the stuff you took. You can get out of the country now, start a new life. You’ll be rich. Why don’t you just let her go, leave us alone?”

_“It will end when I say it’s over, Tommy. And only when I say. Listen carefully. The next call will be in two days, on Saturday, five minutes past five in the afternoon exactly. Don’t be late. If you call one second past that time, I start cutting. I won’t be this lenient again. Same rules apply in the meantime. Stay out of sight. Speak to no-one, especially your cop friend. If he comes near you, you keep on using those special skills of yours to put him off the scent. And son; don’t leave town.”_

“Okay.” Blair swallowed nervously, fully aware of just how many of those rules he had broken today, however involuntarily. “But please, man, I need to talk to her. Please, let me just speak to her, for a minute, just so I know she’s okay. I’m begging you, man.”

 _“Hey, who said I can’t indulge my kid? Hey babe, our little boy wants to talk.”_  There was the sound of footsteps, then Naomi’s halting voice came on the phone.  _“Sweetie?”_  she asked, her voice hoarse.  _“Is that you?”_

“Oh, mom.” Suddenly Blair could hardly speak. “Oh god, mom. Are you okay?”

 _“I’m okay, baby.”_  She was crying, but obviously trying to hold it together for Blair’s sake.  _“Don’t worry about me, sweetheart. I’ll be fine.”_

Her voice was abruptly silenced, and Blair flinched as though something had been ripped from him. Buchanan came back on the phone.  _“That’s enough, Tommy. Don’t want to spoil you now, do we?”_  He laughed nastily.  _“Five minutes past five, Saturday afternoon. Don’t be late.”_  The phone went dead.

Blair didn’t move, the quiescent phone still pressed against his ear. Carefully, Jim pried it from his fingers and snapped it shut. Blair sat for a moment, staring into space, then dropped his head in his hands, shoulders shaking; trying desperately to hold onto his self control.

Jim looked on helplessly, a huge part of him wanting to give comfort. But the ache of betrayal which still weighed heavily in his gut stayed his hand. It was Simon, therefore, who moved in to awkwardly pat Sandburg on the shoulder, as Jim turned and left the room.

***

Staring up at the clear night sky, unable to block the sound of Sandburg’s misery from his hearing, Jim sighed heavily. Relieved though he was that the worst case scenario of his nightmares had all been a product of his overactive imagination and tendency to suspect the worst, there was still little in this situation he found himself able to take comfort from.

Forgiveness did not come easily to Jim Ellison. His brother Stephen’s childish, spiteful act, years ago, had resulted in Jim sundering himself from the Ellison family. He had not seen or spoken to his brother for years afterwards. Now that he and Stephen had been reunited, Jim was happy to have his brother back in his life. But he still tended to keep him at arm’s length, unwilling to share any deeper part of himself with him. 

Stephen had been just the first in a long line of people who had betrayed Jim’s trust. Each time it had happened since, he’d cursed himself for being such a bad judge of character, and for showing his soft underbelly to those who would just as soon stab him in the back.

But he’d truly believed, with no more reason than his own gut instincts, that Blair was different. That here was someone he could trust implicitly, someone he liked and was drawn to, someone who could be his  _friend_. It hadn’t happened all at once, that friendship and trust, but had, instead, grown exponentially, beginning when Blair had saved him from being mown down by a garbage truck the very first day they had met. And every day since, when Blair had saved him from the onslaught of senses gone haywire and watched his back, the other man’s trust had been deservedly earned, often at spectacular cost to Blair himself. 

Was it any wonder, he asked himself, given the lessons of his past, that this whole business had come as such a shock? That anger, hurt and the sense of betrayal had consumed him? That his worst suspicions had run away with themselves, exposing his deepest vulnerabilities and fears, and leaving him feeling as though Blair had ripped his innards out? 

But other emotions were at war within him too, now he had heard the whole sordid story. Pity at what his partner had been put through, rage on Blair’s behalf, and fear for Naomi’s well-being. And at the moment, hearing Simon murmur quiet words of encouragement to the distraught man in the bedroom, he had to admit he’d been utterly wrong to jump to such inflated conclusions, and refuse to give Sandburg even the benefit of the doubt. 

The Blair he had  _thought_  he had known, the confident, capable, independent anthropologist, had been a blind - because all the time, this dark specter of the past had been underneath. The young man who had wistfully fantasized that Timothy Leary might be his father, had in fact  _had_  a father all along. A father who had – if Simon’s brief précis had been correct – acted with such brutality, that Blair was left with no conscious memory until now of the awful events which had taken place in his childhood. A father who had been so dangerous, that Blair and Naomi had been hiding from him all this time.

To his intense discomfort, Jim found that a perverse part of him still wanted to hate Blair for deceiving and hurting him, and wanted to feel justified in locking Sandburg up and throwing away the key, despite everything he now knew about Sandburg’s motives. No matter how sorry he felt for Blair, his anger at his partner’s ill-considered actions still simmered.

But as he considered that emotion, he found that his anger constantly veered off, reflected off the warped surface of Blair’s pain back to a faceless man in Cascade, who got his kicks out of kidnapping women and forcing his own son to self-destructive acts. And the odd protective urge he had always felt around Blair kicked in, despite himself. Buchanan had hurt his partner. He had hurt him so badly that Blair had sacrificed not only his friendship with Jim, but his life and liberty as well, in a misguided and desperate attempt to save his mother’s life.

Complete forgiveness might be a ways off, he had to admit. He would have a lot of ‘processing’ to do first, and he and Blair would have to sit down and talk things through once this was all over. Added to that, Blair was facing the very real possibility of prosecution for his involvement in the robberies, which would mean the end of their partnership for good, even if they managed to sort out their personal issues.

But despite his inner turmoil, and rapidly see-sawing emotions, Jim was sure about one thing. He was damned if he would allow Buchanan to hurt Blair any more than he already had.

***

A while later, Jim came back into the cabin, just as Simon exited the bedroom, closing the door softly behind him. “How’s he doing?” Jim asked.

Simon sighed. “He’s sleeping now. Exhausted. I cleaned up his wrists, put on dressings, and he practically passed out on me. He didn’t say anything more. I think he’s pretty much reached his limits.” 

Jim looked at Simon. “I want to kill that bastard.”

“Look, Jim,” Simon protested, “I know Sandburg hurt you, but under these circumstances…”

“No, not Blair!” Jim exploded. “The sick son of a bitch who has Naomi!”

“Okay, Jim,” Simon placated. “Calm down. I’m sorry.”

“Jesus, Simon.” Jim ran a hand over his face. “He has Sandburg so twisted round, he can’t see straight. What the hell was Blair thinking, going along with this? He should have spoken to me in the first place. He should have  _trusted_  me. None of this was necessary.”

“No argument there.” Simon fished around in his pocket, and pulled out the remains of his cigar with a look of relief. “So, what are you gonna do?” he asked as he twirled it in his fingers. “Correction,” he added. “What are  _we_  gonna do?”

Jim took a breath as he considered, then let it out. “We’re gonna keep him,” he proclaimed, nodding back to the bedroom containing his sleeping partner, “here for tonight; let him rest. We have nearly two days until the next call. When Blair wakes, we’ll see if we can’t beat this moron at his own game.” He looked forthrightly at Simon, the words a vow. “We’re going to get Naomi back safe, Simon, and put that sadistic asshole back behind bars where he belongs. And we’re going to do it together. All three of us.”

Simon grinned, then clamped the cigar between his teeth as he headed towards the door. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say,” he muttered, as he passed by Jim on the way out.

*** 

When Blair woke hours later, at what appeared to be dawn of the next day, it was to the sound of raucous snores from somewhere below. Peering over the edge of the bed, he was treated to the sight of Simon lying on the floor in a sleeping bag, mouth open wide enough to catch cicadas.

If it wasn’t for the bandages on Blair’s wrists, and the pervading stink of the filthy clothes he was still, unfortunately, wearing; he could easily imagine that the three of them were on vacation, taking a long weekend to hike and fish at Simon’s cabin retreat, just as they had many times in the past. Putting his head back down on the pillow, he lost himself for a moment in the fantasy.

Until Naomi’s face, tear streaked and fearful, rose in his mind’s eye. 

A quiet voice to his right disturbed the vision. “Hey.” Jim, he could sense, was lying next to him, on top of the covers. How the hell he could stand to be so close to Blair with his heightened sense of smell, Blair had no idea. He could hardly stand it himself. “You awake?” Jim asked.

There was no point trying to feign sleep to a sentinel. It was, in any case, time to face the music. “Uh huh,” he answered, his eyes still closed.

A hand gripped his shoulder, shaking it a little. “Get up,” Jim said quietly, obviously trying to avoid waking Simon. “Get showered while I make breakfast.” The same hand tapped him on the wrist. “I’ll have a look at these and your ankle afterwards.” Blair felt the bed tip and sway as Jim got up.

Swallowing back the peevish retort that automatically came to mind at Jim’s order, Blair waited until he heard the other man leave the room. Then he got up and went to the bathroom, trying hard, as he stripped off and started the water, not to think about how he had totally cracked in front of Jim and Simon last night; the memory a stone in his empty gut. He eyed the window, the avenue of his aborted escape, shamefacedly.

It was good to be able to shower, after days of miserable existence on the streets. He luxuriated in the moment, the delicious warmth pounding on aching muscles and raw skin; and he sighed as some of his residual tension drained away along with the water. Wishing he had the means with which to shave, he settled at soaping up the unfamiliar growth of hair.

Finished finally, he emerged dripping, and eyed his discarded clothes with distaste, lamenting that he had nothing else to put on besides the stinking rags. Wiping an arm across the steamed-up mirror, he peered through the remaining droplets of condensation at the bloodshot, disreputable-looking individual who was looking back at him, as he tried to finger-comb his tangled hair into submission.

Then he stopped, breathing hard, when what he had done hit him suddenly, hard. He had broken the rules. He had let himself be caught, and worse – had told the very people he had been ordered not to tell, everything that had been going on. And he had told them willingly, in a moment of weakness, wanting desperately, like a child, that they make it all better.

Blair had never loathed himself more than he did at that moment.

He was reluctantly reaching out to pick up the grimy pants he’d been wearing when a knock sounded at the door. “Sandburg,” called Jim. “I’m leaving clean clothes just outside the door. Okay?” A familiar sense of annoyance broke into Blair’s self-pity, as he realized that the sentinel had been listening in and waiting for him to finish. Then it dissipated just as quickly, when he reminded himself that he had totally lost the right to privacy when he had aided and abetted a criminal and turned on his friends.

Blair opened the door a crack, retrieving the pile which was outside. Sweats, at least a size too big, and thick socks - the change of clothes Jim kept in his gym bag in the truck for emergencies. But clean, and infinitely more palatable than the clothes he had been wearing.

Now, clean at last and dressed, Blair went out into the main room of the cabin, with its kitchen at one end. Jim was at the stove, cooking bacon, which he had presumably found in the freezer Simon kept stocked for his frequent trips out here. “Have a seat,” Jim said in a reasonable tone, without turning. “It’s almost done.”

The utter strangeness of the situation struck Blair suddenly, forcefully, even as the delicious smell caused his empty belly to rumble. Only last night he had been this man’s prisoner, handcuffed and locked in the trunk of a car. Unable to stop the words, he challenged, “Why are you being so nice to me all of a sudden, man? I mean, what is this? What, are you playing good-cop, bad-cop all by yourself?”

Jim didn’t turn, but glanced his way briefly, an unreadable expression on his face. “Why shouldn’t I be nice to you?” he asked.

“Oh, come on!” This was too weird for words. “You know why. You said you and me were finished, and I accept that. It’s no more than I deserve after what I’ve done, man. So how can you just stand there and cook breakfast, and tell me to sit down, as though nothing happened? Is this some kind of revenge thing? Are you getting me all nice and comfortable so you can get back at me when I don’t expect it?”

Jim turned; looked at him steadily. “Is that what your dad used to do?” he asked.

The words cut Blair to the quick. A vivid memory - every bit as potent as the other memories of humiliation and terror which had recently resurfaced - flashed before his eyes. His mother - little more than a girl herself - and he, being impotently forced to observe her pain, at the mercy of one who professed kinship to him. He found his voice. “Don’t… just… don’t, all right? You have no idea what he used to do! No  _fucking_  idea!” 

Jim took a step towards him. “Sandburg…” he began.

But Blair cut him off, shaking his head in rebuttal and glaring anger. And, half daring Jim to stop him, he tore open the cabin door and fled down the steps. Breathing hard, overwhelmed almost more by Jim’s baffling and sudden solicitude than his own turbulent emotions, he ended up sitting on a fallen log several yards from the house, shivering in the morning breeze.

He was a mess. He knew it. Jim knew it, and so did Simon. His mom was back there, back with  _him_ ; and Blair was as impotent now as he had been as a child to stop her pain. And all he could think, watching Jim casually cooking, was how much he wanted to hide in the other man’s shadow until all was right with the world again.

Which, of course, was not an option. Because Jim, he was certain, despised him now. 

But not nearly so much as he despised himself.

Jim found him a short while later, after allowing him a little time to compose himself; apparently not worried any more that Blair would try to escape. As Blair heard Jim come to stand beside him, he said miserably, without lifting his head from his hands, “I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry, man.”

“I know.”

“I know you won’t believe me,” Blair carried on, “and I don’t blame you for that. But I never wanted to hurt you, Jim. I’ll regret it for the rest of my life. But I knew you’d survive it. You’d hate me for it, but you’d still be alive. But my mom…” He faltered. “My mom could die if I don’t do what he tells me. And she doesn’t deserve to die.”

There was silence a moment. Then, finally needing to know how much shit he was in, Blair looked up and asked, “Are you going to arrest me?”

“I don’t know,” Jim admitted, not looking at Blair. “Not yet. Maybe later, when we get your mom back.”

Blair nodded, resigned. He had known as soon as he had given in to Buchanan’s demands that it was only a matter of time before it would all be over for him. But saving Naomi was all he could think about. The  _only_  thing that mattered. 

“Look,” Jim broke into his thoughts. “You made some bad choices, Chief. You did the wrong thing. You broke the law, and you  _know_  there has to be repercussions from that.” Blair didn’t look up as Jim came to sit down beside him, close but not touching. “I won’t lie to you,” Jim carried on, “and this shouldn’t come as any surprise. I’m not sure I can ever completely get past this.” 

Blair nodded, his throat tight. It was what he expected.

Jim ploughed into Blair’s continued silence. “That you could do what you did… well, Chief, I’m telling you, it hurts a lot. I’m not just talking about the mace thing, or you using my senses against me, although god knows that’s bad enough. It’s not even that you chose to put Naomi first, because I can understand why you did that. I’m talking about trust. You lied to me, Blair, from the first minute he got you involved in the robberies. It makes me wonder what else you lied about.”

“I… I don’t expect you to believe this, man,” Blair stuttered. “But I swear to god. I didn’t lie about anything else.”

Jim exhaled, a sardonic puff of air. “Right. Well, you’ll understand if I reserve judgment on that for now, Chief.” His voice was even, without expression, but Blair knew him well, and could hear the emotion hidden underneath. “What scares me,” Jim went on, “is how good at it you are. I never guessed you were involved, not for a minute, even though I knew someone was fucking with my senses. I knew it was someone who  _knew_  I was a sentinel. All the time, I was living with the sentinel expert, and I never got it. I trusted you that much.”

Blair’s vision blurred, as guilt overwhelmed him. He knew how hard won Jim’s trust had been. And Blair had destroyed it, throwing that trust back in Jim’s face, wounding a good man in the process, by hitting him where it hurt the most. 

The best friend he had ever had.

A fresh wave of self disgust and shame overwhelmed Blair. “I’m sorry,” he offered again miserably, inadequately, knowing in his heart it wasn’t enough; it would most likely never be enough. 

Jim took a deep breath, and let it out. Then, his gaze still fixed into the distance - not on Blair; emphatically not on Blair - he said, “We have to put this to one side, what you did, what happened between you and me. It’s time to get on track. You’re finished playing this by his rules. We have a job to do - we have to find your mom and get her out of there. We’ll deal with everything else once she’s safe.”

“We?” Blair queried without thinking, and he winced at the wretched hope in his own voice.

In answer, Jim clapped him on the shoulder as he rose. “Come inside,” he said, and Blair hoped pathetically that the rough edge of compassion in his voice wasn’t imagined. “We’ll decide what to do after breakfast.”

Blair watched through a mist as Jim strode back to the cabin, allowing himself at long last to wonder if he shouldn’t just have asked for Jim’s help in the beginning. Instead, he’d destroyed the most significant friendship he had ever had, only to end up at the same place.

Finally, he realized just how much he had messed up.

***

It was a surreal breakfast that Simon entered into a little while later. As the three of them consumed coffee, bacon and waffles, Sandburg spent the entire time avoiding looking at either of his companions.

It was obvious that Blair hadn’t been eating much while on the run, as helping after helping disappeared. At least, Simon mused, watching him surreptitiously, none of this had ruined the kid’s appetite. Reaching for the bottle of antacids he kept in his jacket pocket, he felt mildly resentful that he could not say the same about himself.

It was clear to Simon’s observant eyes that Sandburg’s obsessive drive to get back to Cascade, and do Buchanan’s bidding, had abated this morning. Blair had an air of defeat about him, which was totally unlike the lively individual Simon knew. And it certainly didn’t help ease the tight feeling in his gut.

In classic Ellison style, the utensils were washed and cleared away before they got down to discussing business. “Chief,” Jim began, taking charge, and seeming, much to Simon’s relief, far less antagonistic toward Sandburg than he’d been. “Come over here. Sit down. We need to talk.”

Blair turned from stacking plates in the cupboard – he had waded into the post-breakfast cleanup quite obviously as a means of avoiding interaction with the two of them. Now, looking like he was going to his own execution, he moved to the table, his face tense and unhappy. 

The three of them now seated, Jim got the ball rolling. “Okay,” he said, “We have…” he glanced at his watch. “A little over thirty-two hours before showtime. We need to get back to Cascade and get started on finding out where Buchanan is holding Naomi. Sandburg, you stick with me. We’ll find somewhere in town to use as a base until this is all over.”

“Look,” Sandburg protested. “I can’t be seen with you, all right? If he even suspects I’ve spoken to you, he’ll kill her.”

“You’re not thinking very clearly, Chief,” Jim replied, shaking his head. “He obviously has no tail on you or I right now, because he had no idea last night that we’d met up or that you’d left town. As long as we don’t go back to the loft, and keep our heads down, everything should be fine.”

“Jim,” Simon interjected. “The guy indicated he had ‘sources’ of information about your movements, and he knew that you didn’t go home last night, at least up to midnight. We need to find out where he’s getting his information – if he learns that Blair is with us, it could have consequences.”

Ellison was nodding. “Right.” He looked at Blair, who was staring fixedly at the table, his worry for his mother once again brought into stark focus by Simon’s words. “Sandburg,” Jim said, a little sharply. “Stay with the program here, all right? Who is his contact?”

Blair looked up. “I don’t know,” he said miserably. 

“You’re the one who’s been in touch with this guy. Make an educated guess. Come on, Chief. What has he said that might give us a clue about where he’s getting his information?”

Blair thought for a minute. Then shook his head. “All he said to me was what you heard last night; that he knew you’d disappeared, and he thought you were out looking for me. Oh,” his eyes widened as he remembered, “and the other day he warned me that you knew about me…” he faltered, but rallied. “About me helping him, when you found the evidence he planted. So he must have found that out before you confronted me.”

Jim was frowning, as something he hadn’t even thought to question, so fixated as he’d been on Blair’s betrayal, finally clicked into place. “That doesn’t make any sense. No one else knew about my suspicions. I didn’t say anything about the evidence I found until after you’d gone missing, and even then, I only told Simon.”

“Could he have used surveillance equipment?” Simon asked Jim. “Bugged your car, or something, and somehow you let something slip while you were doing your stakeout of Blair at Rainier?”

Jim shook his head. “I didn’t use my own vehicle after I left the PD that day. I requisitioned one from the fleet. I wanted to keep tabs on Sandburg without him seeing my truck and getting suspicious. Unless someone saw me drive out of the PD in that car and followed me, they wouldn’t have known I was on my way to put Blair under observation.” 

“So,” Simon speculated, “his contact found out that you’d changed cars somehow, and got on your tail?”

“And whoever his contact is,” Jim thought aloud, “he watched my movements that day, because Buchanan hoped I’d found the evidence that Sandburg was involved. His inside man followed me down to the car pool, saw which car I took, and followed me to Rainier, where he saw me waiting round the back of Hargrove Hall. Then when Buchanan heard about it, he put two and two together and called Blair to warn him.” 

“Jim,” Simon objected, not liking the obvious conclusion that someone from their own department was in league with Buchanan. “Anybody could have followed you. Someone waiting outside the PD for you to drive off, even, or someone who was keeping tabs on Blair at Rainier. It may not be a cop.”

Jim shook his head. “No. I requisitioned the car, and left right away from the station garage. It has to be someone from the PD, because unless they saw me change vehicle, anyone else would have been thrown off my tail. And as much as we don’t want to believe it, a cop is most likely, given the fact that I wasn’t even aware I was being watched.”

Not at all happy about the likelihood of a viper in their midst, Simon changed the subject, broaching the question which had been bugging him the most. “Sandburg,” he said. “There is something about this whole thing that makes no sense. Your father…” Blair winced, so Simon amended it to, “Buchanan, has pulled off five successful heists. If you weren’t at the last robbery, as you claim, it looks like he tried to frame you for it. Why the hell, then, isn’t he hightailing it out of town with the proceeds, now he’s put the heat on you? What is he hoping to prove, still holding onto Naomi, and making you run about Cascade keeping out of sight, and living on the streets?”

Blair raised bitter eyes to Simon. “He thinks he owns Naomi,” he said bluntly. “As far as he’s concerned, man, she’s his, bought and paid for. He told me he’d let her go eventually if I did what he said, but as time goes on, man, I… I realize how unlikely that is. But the rest of it?” He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Jim leaned forward, his eyes fixed on the younger man. “I think you do know, Chief.”

Blair shook his head again, anguish in his eyes.

Jim carried on, his voice soft. “It’s revenge, isn’t it? Because you dropped the dime on him all those years ago. He’s trying to make you suffer, doing it to punish you. It never was about the robberies at all. You said it yourself – he thinks he owns Naomi. He’s not gonna let her go, no matter how many hoops he makes you jump through, and he’s just making you pay for turning him in.”

Blair bowed his head. His reply was scarcely audible. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess you’re right.”

Jim was watching Blair carefully. “Chief, there’s no way you can win. No way you could ever have gotten Naomi out of there on your own, by playing his game. He’s set you up to lose, and when he’s done, he’ll let you take the heat for the robberies  _he_  did. He wants to destroy your life, and when he’s done that, and you’re in jail, he’ll take Naomi and get out of town. You follow me, Chief? Can you see that now, huh?”

Blair nodded miserably, as though he didn’t trust himself to speak.

Simon addressed Blair next. “Sandburg,” he asked, his no-nonsense tone breaking through Blair’s silent grief and self recrimination, “Have you any idea where he’s holding Naomi?”

Blair swallowed a couple of times, then shook his head. “No. I don’t. I, uh, I used to have to meet him, before each robbery, to go over his equipment. He’d rented space in the warehouse district. Close to where I used to live, actually. But I’m pretty sure he isn’t staying there. And wherever he is, Naomi is with him.”

“Why are you sure?” Jim asked.

Blair looked up. “It’s just not his style, man. He has money stashed. He’ll be renting something up-market.”

Jim kept pushing. “Okay, you know the guy; what he’d be likely to do. I accept that. But what makes you think he’s keeping Naomi with him, instead of locked up somewhere else?”

He had obviously hit a sore spot. “Because she’s his wife, man!” Blair exploded. “Because he said he wanted her to resume her spousal duties, okay? Are you satisfied? Are you happy now?”

Jim shook his head. “Chief, if you think anything about what has happened to Naomi makes me even slightly happy, then you don’t know me at all.”

The quiet words cut through Sandburg’s outburst like a hot knife through butter. “I’m sorry,” Blair said, all belligerence dissipated.

But Jim waved the apology off. “Forget it. The important thing is working out where he is, and how to get her out of there. Let’s try and keep on track here, huh?”

“Okay,” said Simon, backtracking. “So he had surveillance on you,” he addressed Jim, “and possibly on me, since Buchanan has forbidden Blair to talk to me too, through whoever is on his payroll at the PD. I’ll do a little digging there, when I get back. I’ll find out who the bastard is that’s working for him.”

Jim nodded his approval. “Good. If we know who Buchanan’s source is, we could feed a little disinformation back. I assume he knows about the missing person’s report. If it gets upgraded to an APB, and Buchanan thinks Sandburg is now officially a suspect in the case, he might change the rules. Chief,” he said, and Sandburg’s head shot up. “You need to call him tomorrow at the rendezvous time. Simon already checked out the number you called last night, but it’s diverted through some kind of router, so we can’t get a location. So the next time you call him, I’ll be listening in, see if I can’t find out something about where he is. Other than that, if he thinks we’re close to arresting you, he may arrange to meet up with you. In fact, I want you to persuade him to do just that. Tell him you’re desperate. Make him think you’ll spill your guts about him if you’re caught.”

Blair looked horrified. “I can’t do that, man. He’ll kill Naomi!”

“Sandburg,” Jim said forcefully, “he’ll kill her anyway, if we don’t do this! This is a game to him, remember? You can’t save her playing by his rules. Come on, you convinced me. You can convince him. You’re the most convincing liar I’ve ever met. Use your powers for good instead of evil!”

Blair had winced in shame at Jim’s words. Then he nodded, looking desperately unhappy, and avoiding Jim’s eyes. “Okay,” he agreed. “I have no choice. I’ll try.”

Jim leaned closer, trying to get Sandburg’s attention. “We’re going to do everything we can to save her, Chief.” Jim softened his voice, his hand reaching out to grasp Blair’s shoulder briefly. “Use your head. You can do this. We can  _all_  do this. And it’s gonna work.”

Blair just nodded, looking more vulnerable than Simon had ever seen him. But watching Jim’s small overture of reassurance, something in Simon’s gut eased, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

***

The motel Jim chose was cheap and clean; which was about all that could be said for it. Ellison booked one room for the two of them to share, the other man being nominally in his custody. Sandburg didn’t bat an eyelid, following Ellison’s lead without question. It was as though all the fight had gone out of him. 

The rest of the morning leached by, oozing turgidly into the afternoon. Sandburg lay on one of the room’s twin beds, dressed in Jim’s oversized sweats, staring listlessly and without interest at the room’s tiny television with its meager choice of channels. With his uncombed hair tied back loosely, and the haunted expression on his bearded face, Blair looked every bit the penniless street bum he’d been forced to become. 

That Sandburg was afraid for his mother’s safety was a given. His frequent, longing glances toward the door eloquently demonstrated that his thoughts were largely elsewhere. And during the times he glanced Ellison’s way, never looking at him directly or making eye contact, Jim could clearly sense the sour tang of misery rolling off of him, as his features creased in apparent shame.

A large part of Jim wanted to reassure, to give comfort; but that urge was still at war with his shameful inner fantasy of beating Sandburg senseless, and the result was a stalemate. The tension in the air between them was such that neither man spoke to the other beyond a necessary minimum. But finally the charged silence of the dingy room was interrupted by the ringing of Jim’s cell phone. “Ellison,” he said.

 _“Jim, it’s me,”_  Simon announced.  _“I have some information.”_

Jim sat up straighter, and Sandburg flicked off the television, sitting up to watch Jim expectantly. 

“Go on,” Jim prompted.

_“No matter which way I looked at it, I couldn’t see any of our people being Buchanan’s mole. But then it hit me - we have someone new in the department.”_

“Who?” 

The Captain sounded like the cat who’d got the cream.  _“I should have thought of it before. The Major Crime annual report is due in soon, so Rhonda applied to Secretarial Services for some help. She has a temporary administrative assistant working with her. Robyn Ratner, on loan from Homicide. I did a bit of checking, and guess who Ms. Ratner is related to? And who she’s dating?”_

The name sounded familiar, but Jim couldn’t bring the connection to mind. “Who?” he asked.

_“Well put it this way. Who was conveniently on hand when Sandburg was spotted just after the missing person’s report went out?”_

Jim blinked. Then remembered the patrol officers who had come so close to apprehending Sandburg. “Ratner and Dante!”

_“Got it in one, Detective. Officer Ratner is her brother. Dante is her fiancé.”_

Jim glanced at Sandburg, who was watching him avidly, obviously frustrated at being unable to hear the other end of the conversation. Thinking back, Jim remembered now that an unfamiliar young woman, who’d been sitting at Rhonda’s desk, had keyed in his initial request to requisition a car, just before he’d gone down to the car pool to pick it up. Presumably she had alerted her boyfriend and brother to his movements. “So,” Jim asked, certain that Simon’s deductions were correct, “what do you want to do?”

_“Well, I trust Rhonda implicitly. I’ve asked her to keep a careful eye on our Ms Ratner, and to let a few bits of confidential information slip - the kind that suggests I am about to issue an APB for Sandburg, followed by a warrant for his arrest on suspicion of robbery.”_

“And the others?”

_“Their trail is cold since we apprehended Blair. If their brief was to keep tabs on Sandburg, they’ve failed. Seems his little trick with the strobe yesterday had the effect of forcing them off his tail, as well as off ours.”_

“Good.”

_“That’s not to say I’m not keeping an eye on them. I am. In fact, I’ve got Brown and Rafe tailing them at the moment. We have to do this in-house. Until this thing is finished, I can’t involve I.A.”_

Jim could see the logic in that. They had no idea how much the two rogue officers knew, either about Blair’s complicity in the crimes or about his senses. Until they untangled this mess, and decided how to handle the inevitable fallout, it was better to keep it to themselves. “What did you tell them, sir? Rafe and Brown, I mean.”

 _“I’m the Captain, Jim. I don’t need to give a reason.”_  Simon chuckled, eliciting an answering smile from Ellison at Simon’s characteristic posturing.  _“Their brief is to follow, report if the two of them are seen meeting anyone or talking on the phone. Who, where, when. That kind of thing. If they’re challenged, to improvise some plausible reason for being there. The detail is up to them.”_

“Right.”

_“How you doing, Jim? And how’s Sandburg?”_

“Fine, sir. We’re both fine.”

_“Good. Keep it that way. I’ll be over in an hour or two, just as soon as I send Ratner and Dante on a wild goose chase to get them off my back. I have a file I want you to take a look at.”_

“Very good, sir.”

The Captain rang off, and Jim updated Sandburg on the situation. Predictably, he was not very happy about the identity of his father’s spies. “Shit,” he said. “Dave Ratner. I though he was my friend, man!”

Jim gave him a hard look, anger, for the moment, uppermost in the mix of emotions which churned within him. “A taste of your own medicine, huh?”

But instead of the retort Ellison half expected, Sandburg just winced in shame. And instead of feeling satisfaction at winning a point, Ellison felt something a little like shame himself at having caused a reappearance of the defeated expression on Sandburg’s face.

***

The file that Simon brought with him, when he arrived in the early evening was, predictably, not a pleasant read. Jim went out to sit in Simon’s car while he perused it, leaving Blair back in the motel room in the Captain’s capable hands. 

Simon’s contact in the San Francisco Police Department had faxed him a copy of Buchanan’s police record, as well as the initial witness statement given by Thomas Buchanan – now known as Blair Sandburg. And what he read turned Jim’s stomach.

According to his statement, young Thomas had been illicitly messing around in his father’s car, when Buchanan had gotten in and taken off, unaware that his son was in the back. Afraid of his father’s wrath if he was discovered, the boy had kept his head down and remained quiet. They’d driven for approximately twenty minutes, into an unlit area. Buchanan had exited the car, and Thomas had finally taken a look at his surroundings, to find that the car was parked outside a deserted warehouse, into which his father disappeared. Thomas had crept out of the car and approached the building. Peering through a grimy window, he’d seen a man in the dim interior, chained by his arms from the high ceiling, and his father stalking around him like a cat toying with its prey.

What followed was the eyewitness account that the traumatized youth had related, of the torture and death of Samuel Gregory. In shockingly sterile language, clinically documenting what he’d told the cop who’d transcribed his statement, a picture was painted of screaming, blood, abuse and horror, all of it witnessed through a window that the appalled child had been unable to tear himself away from. And once it was over, Buchanan had driven away with the bloody and broken body of his victim in the trunk of his car, obliviously leaving his terrified son to make his own way home.

Unable to read further, Jim fumbled open the door of the car, and barely made it to the bushes in time to lose everything he’d eaten that day. And all he could see, as he heaved, was the look on Blair’s face yesterday as they’d pulled his vomit-sodden figure out of the trunk of Simon’s car - when they’d unwittingly forced him to relive part of his nightmare.

***

Unable to deal with Sandburg just yet, Jim stood in the doorway of the motel room, and beckoned Simon out to join him. Glancing at Blair, who was still sitting inside, Jim saw him turn his face away, as Simon got up to leave the room.

Once the door was closed, effectively isolating them from Blair, Jim handed the file back to Simon, his silence speaking volumes. Simon’s face was equally grim as he received it into his hand. “Did you read it?” he asked.

Jim nodded, staring off into the distance, jaw grinding audibly.

It seems Simon had been similarly affected. “Poor kid,” he said. “No wonder he’s screwed up over this. He thinks that’s what’s going to happen to Naomi.” He frowned at Jim’s continued silence. “Jim? You okay?”

“I…” Jim tried to find the words. “Simon, it’s not just what’s in that file, though god knows, that’s a terrible thing for a child to see. It’s… I just can’t believe I got it so wrong. That I was so blind to what was going on with him. He’s been going through hell, dealing with all of this on his own, and all I could see was my own damned suspicion.”

“Well,” Simon countered, “If it’s any consolation, Jim, I didn’t see it either. And let’s face it, Sandburg is a master at subterfuge.” He shrugged. “From what Jack Medina - the Federal agent I spoke to - told me, Blair learned to keep things hidden at his mother’s knee. This,” he tapped the report, “is the tip of the iceberg of what Blair went through as a kid. According to Medina, Buchanan systematically abused both Blair and Naomi during all the years they lived together, physically and psychologically. He played them off against each other – when one transgressed, the other got punished. To protect each other, they both had to learn to lie convincingly.”

“Jesus.” Jim wiped his face with a shaky hand. He could certainly empathize with that scenario, although in comparison he’d had it more than easy. “What,” he asked pointedly, needing to know how he could help turn this around, “are the chances that Blair will get prosecuted for his part in all of this?”

Simon shrugged. “There are mitigating circumstances, Jim, no doubt about it. His mom was kidnapped, and he’s been going along with the demands of her kidnapper as part of the ransom. But you and I both know that duress will only partially exonerate him in the eyes of a judge and jury. He should have come to us in the beginning. Instead, he chose to break the law. ”

Jim sighed. “That’s what I thought.” The fact that Blair felt he’d  _had_  no choice wouldn’t excuse his complicity with Buchanan in the planning of the robberies. No matter what, he  _was_  an accessory. No way would he get off without sanction, even if he managed to avoid jail.

Simon, it seemed, had more to say. “The thing that worries me the most is the stuff about your senses. I’ll be totally honest with you, Jim. I don’t know if we can keep your abilities under wraps,  _and_  get Blair off the hook. Going by the assumption that Buchanan has orchestrated this whole scenario to punish Blair, I’m guessing he’s gonna be more than ready to finger the kid as his accomplice, and there’s very little real evidence to suggest otherwise. What Blair did – helping with the robberies and evading capture in Cascade – it all makes him look guilty, and no amount of protest that Buchanan forced him to participate will completely clear him.” Simon swallowed, as though worried about Jim’s reaction. “Unless, that is,” he carried on, “we can point to the fact that Blair has specialist knowledge about your senses, and that Buchanan recruited him specifically to put you off the scent, as part of his plan to destroy Blair’s life, and  _not_  as a partner in crime. Unless the  _whole_  truth comes out, it’s going to be hard to defend what he did.”

There was no decision to make. “I’ll do whatever I have to do, Simon,” Jim said. “He’s been through enough.”

Simon, to Jim's relief, didn’t look surprised at that. Accepting Jim’s assurance without question, he instead remarked bitterly, “Whatever happens, Jim, the bastard wins. Naomi and Blair have been through hell, Blair’s life will never be the same again, and if you go public, your career and privacy are as good as destroyed. And Buchanan will end up back in jail, no worse off than he was before.”

Jim smiled coldly. “That’s assuming he gets out of this alive.”

Simon held up a hand. “I didn’t hear you say that.” 

Simon went on to update Jim further about what had been going on that day. He had, it seemed, been engaging in a little subterfuge of his own. The case had shifted from robbery to kidnapping and, by rights, the FBI should have been called in. The federal contacts Simon had spoken to about Buchanan were already suspicious about the reason for his enquiry, and a couple of agents from DC were due to arrive within the week to discuss the matter further. But for now, the captain had chosen to keep quiet about Naomi’s kidnapping, allowing Jim the time and space to put his plan into operation first.

The captain related all this to Jim before turning to leave. “But Jim,” he added, “I’m worried about the kid. He’s in a bad way, but he’s still going to have to go through with making the call tomorrow. If it goes down how we want, he’s most likely going to end up face-to-face with Buchanan. Are you sure he can pull this off? That he’s up to it? Because if the answer is no, I’m calling this off right now, and getting the Feds involved.”

Jim took a deep breath. He had his own doubts – Blair was certainly under immense strain, and wasn’t operating even close to his usual speed. But Jim’s partner  _was_  highly motivated by the danger to Naomi, nevertheless, and Jim had seen him handle himself well under pressure in the past. “I think he’ll be okay, Simon,” he answered. “If I have any doubts in the next few hours, I’ll let you know. But I think he can do this.”

“You’d better be right, detective,” Simon warned in reply. “Naomi’s life is at stake, and I’m taking an enormous risk by backing you on this.” But he was apparently prepared to trust Jim’s judgment, because he let the matter lie at that.

After Simon left, Jim went back into the room to find Blair crashed out on his bed, eyes closed. A cursory sensory sweep confirmed that he wasn’t sleeping, but Jim decided to leave him alone for now. Later, they would need to talk. But for the time being, he would allow the other man the space his body language asserted that he needed. 

Jim felt too wound up to get any rest himself. There was still tonight and nearly the whole of the next day for them to get through before Blair had to call Buchanan, and even though Jim was used to tedious waits, after years of stakeouts and fingernail biting preludes to missions, the personal nature of this particular situation wasn’t making it easy for him to bide his time. Instead, Jim silently prowled the claustrophobic room, his mind similarly traversing in circles, part of his awareness monitoring Blair until the other man’s breathing evened out into uneasy sleep. 

Eventually, fatigue overtook Jim too and, lying on his own bed in the darkness, the sound of a sudden shower of rain drumming on the windows, the echo of distant thunder and Blair’s even breathing finally lulled him into a doze.

***

Jim found himself prowling again, loping along on strong, feline limbs through the jungle. The wolf slunk along by his side, its fur matted and its eyes downcast, as though at any moment it was liable to abase itself in submission. 

The panther growled in the back of his throat - the wolf’s demeanor displeased him.

A figure emerged out of the trees in their path suddenly, and both panther and wolf pulled up short. He found himself unsurprised at the identity of the man – Incacha. The feral snarl he could feel on his own face morphed into a broad smile of welcome, as the panther’s body straightened, lengthening into Jim’s own tall form. 

The wolf, however, remained the wolf. It sank down on its belly, cowering and whimpering. Jim looked at it, then back at Incacha questioningly.

Incacha answered his unspoken query. “He hides,” he said. “He is too ashamed to show himself.”

Accepting this without question, Jim asked Incacha, “What should I do?”

Incacha glanced at the wolf’s pitiable form, then back to Jim. “Your guide stands at a crossroads,” he said. “One path leads to safety, and the other leads only to death. Darkness shrouds the way, and without the sentinel’s power to see in the dark, the guide cannot decide which path to take.”

Incacha took a step closer, and at his approach, the wolf rolled over onto its back with a frightened whine, meekly bearing its throat. Incacha pointed towards it. “The darkness which hides the way is from his past,” he said. “It is a darkness he has long denied. To defeat it, he must face it. But he cannot do so alone. Only sentinel and guide together can bring light into the darkness, and illuminate the right path. This time,” he said, looking at Jim, “ _you_  must be the guide.”

Jim looked back at the wolf as it whimpered and, to his horror, marks suddenly appeared on its soft belly. As he watched, they deepened and lengthened into deep, dreadful gouges, oozing blood through the grey fur. “The wounds have long been hidden,” Incacha said, as the wolf’s desperate whimpers became mixed with awful cries of pain, blood running in rivulets to pool on the ground beside the creature. “Now they are revealed, healing can at last begin.” 

The Chopec shaman moved in between Jim and the wolf, forcing Jim to look away from the animal’s awful suffering. “Sentinel,” he ordered, his eyes boring into Jim’s. “See to your guide.” 

***

The howls of the wolf rang in Jim’s ears, and segued seamlessly into a human voice – Blair’s voice - shouting out in terror and pain. “No! No! Please! Nooooooo…!” 

Reflexes took over and, shaking off the dregs of dream-filled sleep with the consummate ability of someone skilled at snapping to full alert at a moment’s notice, Ellison was beside the other bed in an instant, shaking the sleeping man by the shoulder. “Hey! C’mon, Chief. Wake up.”

Sandburg jerked awake, and as his eyes roamed the dark room, he started violently. Before Jim knew what was happening, Blair threw himself off the other side of the bed with a bump. “What the hell…?” Jim wondered out loud, as Sandburg kept moving, ending up huddled like a frightened child in the corner of the room.

Snapping on the bedside light, Ellison crawled over. “Hey,” he said softly, putting out a tentative hand. “What’s going on, Blair?”

Blair didn’t answer, beyond what sounded suspiciously like a stifled sob. His ponytail had come loose, and his hands, wrapped around his knees, were shaking underneath the fall of hair.

“Ah, shit, Chief,” Jim breathed. Moving forward, Jim shifted to sit beside Blair, one arm going around the other man’s shoulders. Blair stiffened for a moment, then his shoulders shook as he began to cry. And Jim wrapped both arms around him in response, helplessly holding him through the outpouring of raw misery.

Eventually Blair quieted and, aware at last of where he was, he found some measure of inner strength and pushed himself out of Jim’s embrace. Ellison let him go, understanding the other man’s need to recover self-control. But they stayed side by side, their thighs touching, while Blair wiped the tears off his face and took deep breaths, getting back his equilibrium.

Eventually, Jim asked quietly, “You want to talk about it?”

Blair shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said miserably. “You don’t need this, man.”

“Don’t worry about that, Chief.” Jim told him. Then, in a flash of intuition, asked, “You remembering stuff?”

Blair nodded, not looking up from where his gaze was fixed on the floor.

“Hey,” Jim said softly. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Blair swallowed, his voice still thick with emotion. “You don’t know that, man. He… he…” Blair shook his head. “She could be dead already,” he whispered. “If he knows I’m here with you… Shit.” He rubbed the heels of his hands hard against his eyes, his tone self-accusatory. “What am I thinking! Of course he knows! He always knows everything-”

“Hey!” Jim grabbed his wrists and pulled them away. “Settle down! Look, he’s not all-powerful or all-knowing, all right? He has no idea where you are. As far as we know, we have his information circuit covered. Just calm down, Chief.”

“You don’t understand.” Blair was shaking his head, pleading for Jim to hear him. “What if he  _does_  know? That I got caught, and that I’m here with you, huh? He… he’ll go through with it, man. He’ll hurt my mom.”

“Sandburg…” Jim tried to interrupt.

But Sandburg ploughed on regardless, spewing out his deepest fears, made all the more terrifying in the wake of nightmare. “If I fucked up –and I  _did_ , man, over and over - he punished Naomi. If  _she_  fucked up, it was me he went after. It was his way of keeping us in line. He  _always_  knew, and he always followed through on his threats, man.  _Always_.” Blair’s voice faltered, became breathless. “And… and I remember now what he did to… to that guy… and he said he’d do it to her…”

Having read the file earlier, Jim was more than sympathetic. If Buchanan had been here at this moment, in fact, Jim would have killed him on the spot for what he’d done to Blair and Naomi. But Sandburg was hyperventilating, getting worked up and thinking only of the worst case scenario, and that was getting them nowhere. Jim’s arm crept around his partner again. “Easy, Chief. Come on, settle down.”

Sympathy was, apparently, the wrong approach to take. Abruptly, Sandburg pushed himself off the floor, his fear at last manifesting - more characteristically for him - as rage. “No, I won’t ‘settle down’! Don’t fucking patronize me!” He paced, glaring at Jim, his voice cracking. “You have  _no_  idea what he’s capable of, man! No  _fucking_  idea!”

Abruptly, Jim stood, and got up in Blair’s face. “Then tell me, Sandburg! If you have to say it, tell me, and I’ll listen! But let’s keep some optimism here, huh?” He watched as Sandburg’s fury crumpled at his words, replaced once again by despair and guilt. But before yet another apology could leave the other man’s lips, Jim took hold of his shoulders in a hard grip. “I know it’s hurting you to remember what happened,” he said, more gently but no less forcefully. “And I know you’re worried about your mom. But we have a job to do tomorrow, and I need you to focus, all right?” Jim shook Blair a little. “You’re not a little kid any more, Chief. You’ve been working with me now for nearly three years, acting as a cop. This guy – he’s just another perp for us to deal with, just like all the others. He’s not God.” He looked into Sandburg’s eyes. “And you’re not alone with this,” he said quietly. “Not anymore.”

That got a reaction, but not necessarily the one Jim wanted. Sandburg’s eyes filled up, and his shoulders tensed in silent, helpless misery under Jim’s hands. Not knowing what else to do, Jim moved instinctively, pulling his partner into a hard embrace. 

Sandburg remained rigid, stubbornly refusing to allow his tears to fall this time, but his fist clutched the back of Jim’s shirt in a desperate, iron grip just the same. After a moment, Blair’s muffled voice mumbled, “I don’t deserve this, man. I don’t deserve your help, or… or your,” he faltered, unable to say the words – to quantify his emotion. “I don’t deserve it, all right? Not after what I did.”

“Can it, Chief,” Jim said, but despite the terse command, he continued to hold Blair tightly. “Beating yourself up isn’t going to help you  _or_  your mom.” He sighed, his arms tightening briefly, then one hand creeping up to rub one of Blair’s taut shoulders. “If it helps,” he said, “I understand why you did it, why you did all of it. You did the wrong thing, Blair, but for the right reasons. And don’t forget, buddy,” he confessed, “I acted pretty badly myself yesterday, and I made some outlandish assumptions. I admit it, and I’m not proud of that. But from now on,” his grip became fierce again, “we have to work together. And it’s not going to be easy, but we have  _got_  to trust each other. You  _should_  have trusted me in the beginning, before this mess ever got this far. And I’ve got to be able to trust that you’re not going to fight me any more. We’re going to get through this – but we’ve got to do it together.”

Jim felt Blair nod against his shoulder, as the other man breathed deeply, purposefully, getting himself under control. After a few more moments, Blair pulled away a little, raising his head to look at Jim. His eyes were dry now, his emotional overload suppressed by force of will. And for a second, a brief, rueful smile hovered on his lips. “I know,” he said, “that you’re probably tired of hearing me say I’m sorry, man,” he said. “But for what it’s worth, I really am. I… I know I was wrong. I should have told you in the beginning what was going on.” He nodded, swallowing, as he looked away briefly. Then sad eyes lifted once again to Jim’s. “I know that… that this is the last time we’ll work together. And I… I just want you to know, I know it’s my fault. And I really regret that.” 

The fact that Blair had broken the law by aiding and abetting Buchanan in the robberies, even if under duress, made the continuation of their working partnership a virtual impossibility, Jim knew. But their partnership had long since been based on more than working together, and more than just the sentinel thing, and despite everything that had gone on between them in the past few days, he found that that still mattered to him a great deal. “Whatever happens, Chief,” Jim promised, “I’ll see you through this, and whatever comes afterwards.”

Blair closed his eyes a moment, absorbing Jim’s words, then opened them to gaze up at his friend. “Jim,” he said sincerely, “thanks man, I mean it. And… and I need to ask you this, even if it’s gonna piss you off, man, and spoil this, uh,  _moment_  we have going on here. But I just need to know, because I can’t stop thinking about it. The other day, when I… maced you, were you okay?”

Jim shrugged. “Simon dealt with it. He used the stuff you left out. I got over it.”

“I’m really sorry I hurt you like that, Jim,” Blair said, sincerity in every word.

“For Christ’s sake,” Jim said in mock irritation, “knock it off with the apologies, Sandburg. It’s driving me nuts!” 

For some reason, that response made Blair smile suddenly. “Sorry,” he said again, perversely, and Jim clipped him lightly on the side of the head. “Ow!” The aggrieved glare that was directed Jim’s way was much more like business as usual, and it eased Jim’s heart greatly.

“So,” Blair added, rubbing his head, “Are we okay?”

“I’m not saying that I’m not going to kick your ass for what you did, Sandburg,” Jim growled. But his hands, still resting on his partner’s shoulders, squeezed reassuringly, softening his words. “But I’ll wait until this is over, and we’ve gotten your mom out safe.”

Blair nodded, a sad smile lighting up his eyes. “I can live with that,” he said.

“Good,” Jim said, his hands tightening briefly on Blair’s shoulders once more before he let the other man go. 

Blair looked away from Jim and nodded, his mouth pursed as though he was still holding in some strong emotion. After a few moments, he managed to whisper, “Thanks.” His eyes drifted back to Jim’s face. “For everything.”

Jim shrugged. “It’s not over yet, Chief.” He switched off the lamp, and moved back to his own bed. “Try to get some more sleep, Sandburg. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”

Blair nodded again in the sudden darkness, looking - to Jim’s sentinel vision - less haunted, as he followed the detective’s lead and lay down. “Yeah, man,” Blair’s voice came out of the darkness, resigned, but calm at last. “I know.”

***

The next day was interminable, passing in an agony of anticipation as the time that Blair had to make the call to Buchanan got gradually closer and closer. Jim wished constantly that Buchanan had not insisted on the two day interval before allowing Blair to contact him – the poor guy was wound like a spring, getting tighter and tighter as the deadline approached oh-so-slowly.

Which, Jim supposed, was exactly what Buchanan intended. This wait was nothing more than insidious, brutal torture.

The air between the two of them was clearer today, at least. There was little conversation – what was there for either of them to say? But they no longer avoided each other’s eyes, and the atmosphere wasn’t charged with antagonism and guilt to the same degree as it had been. 

Blair was trying, to Jim’s eyes,  _really_  hard to keep it together - for which he was immensely grateful. He’d come to rely on his partner’s ability to deal with anything that was thrown at them. Cop partners  _had_  to be proactive and self-reliant, and Blair had developed quickly into someone who was even better than that – he had proved himself to be creative too when it came to finding ways to effectively guard Ellison’s back. 

But the world had turned upside down the past few days, transforming Sandburg from someone Jim trusted with his life, to someone he didn’t know at all. Having Blair regain some semblance of his usual control went a little way toward resuming the status quo Ellison had come to rely on, and made it easier for him to view this like any other case, and Buchanan like any other perp; to put the whole thing into perspective without having to waste mental energy worrying about how Blair was coping.

In the clear light of day, and now that they seemed to be getting back on track, Jim found that he had no problem with his understanding of the circumstances they found themselves in. Buchanan was a kidnapper, an extortionist, a murderer and a thief. Jim had dealt with worse, and the asshole was going  _down_. No question. Buchanan’s blood relationship to Blair made no difference to that fact.

A couple of hours before the call was due, however, it became clear how much of Blair’s demeanor was an act worthy of his skills as a major obfuscator. Because the façade began to crack and, to his chagrin, Jim found himself reluctantly playing shrink to Sandburg’s demons.

It became clear very quickly to Jim that Blair’s perception of his biological father was blown out of all proportion, tainted with the memory of a monster seen through a child’s eyes. To Blair, Joe Buchanan was all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful. 

“What if you’re wrong, man?” Pleading eyes glanced Jim’s way once again – they’d been on this merry-go-round for nearly an hour now. “What if he’s got other ways of keeping tabs on me – on  _us_? What if…” He bit his lip briefly, closed his eyes, as if to hold in the words, then forced out, “What if we get there, and she’s already dead?”

Jim shook his head. “Sandburg,” he said forcefully. “We’re going round in circles, here. For god’s sake, get a grip, huh?” Reaching out a hand, he grasped Sandburg by the arm, forcing the other man’s attention. “This isn’t helping. It’s not helping you, and it’s damned well not helping  _her_.”

Sandburg nodded miserably. “I’m trying, okay? But it’s my mom. And I know what he… what he’s capable of.”

“Chief.” Jim shook the arm he held a little, his soft tone getting Blair’s attention. “In situations like this, all ‘what-ifs’ can do is get in the way. Now you  _know_ what you’ve got to do.”

Blair nodded. “Check my emotions at the door, huh?”

“We’ve been through this a thousand times. You do whatever you need to do to stay present. You don’t dwell on ‘what-if’, and you sure as hell don’t build assholes like Buchanan up into some kind of god. He’s working you, playing on your fears. He’s good at it. But you know what?” He released his grip, patted Blair’s arm as his hand withdrew. “You’re better.” 

Despite everything, a fleeting look of pleasure at the praise flittered across Blair’s face. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Jim grinned, a little ruefully. “You got me, didn’t you?”

Shame was back. “Yeah, well, that’s not something I’m particularly proud of, man.”

“Sandburg, the point is, if  _I_  didn’t see through your act, you can make  _him_  believe you. He doesn’t know you like I do, and you got me good.”

It made a twisted kind of sense, and finally Sandburg seemed to get it. He nodded. “Okay.” He took a deep breath, let it out. “I can do this.”

“Yes, you can.”

“I, uh,” Sandburg indicated vaguely the room behind him. “I think I’ll go meditate for a while, man. Until it’s time. Try to get this whole thing into perspective. Okay?”

Relieved to see Blair take some steps in a more positive – and familiar – direction, Jim nodded. “Okay. Good thoughts, huh?”

“Good thoughts,” Blair agreed. 

And Jim watched approvingly as Blair moved away to settle into a half-lotus on the floor by the bed; subconsciously synchronizing his own breathing with Blair’s as the other man gradually let go the worst of his nervous tension.

As long as Jim had known him, Sandburg had always been good at managing and overcoming his fears. And despite the exceptional circumstances they were in, Jim had faith that he’d do it again this time.

After all, what other choice did he have? 

***

The plan was that Blair should persuade Buchanan to meet him face-to-face, and bring Naomi along to the rendezvous. Ellison would follow Blair to the location, monitoring his partner from a distance. Once all the protagonists were in place, the detective would assess the situation, and either move in to apprehend Buchanan, or call Simon for backup.

While Blair was in the bathroom, changing back into the rancid clothes he’d appropriated days ago from the dumpster – he needed to keep up the pretense that he’d been sleeping rough if Buchanan went along with the plan – Jim’s cell phone buzzed into life. “Ellison,” he announced, as he answered it.

 _“Jim, it’s me,”_  Simon said.  _“We lost Ratner and Dante.”_

“What?” The timing couldn’t be worse. “How?”

Simon sounded just as pissed off.  _“Rafe and Brown tailed them to a diner, and waited for them outside. They were in there an hour, so our guys got suspicious. Henri went in, but there was no sign of them. Somehow they managed to slip out of the back.”_

Jim glanced at the closed bathroom door. Not knowing where Buchanan’s henchmen were made the situation much more dangerous. “Shit.”

 _“Not a lot we can do right now, Jim, unless they resurface,”_  Simon said.  _“Maybe we should call the whole thing off. Get the Feds in.”_

“It’s too late for that, Sir. We spook Buchanan now, we could lose Naomi. This plan is the best one we have.”

 _“Yeah.”_  Despite the acceptance, Simon was clearly unhappy.  _“How’s Sandburg holding up?”_

“He’s okay.”

 _“Good.”_  Simon paused.  _“Nearly showtime, Detective. I have Rafe and Brown with me, and we’re standing by to move in on your word to back you up. Keep me informed – I want this son of a bitch.”_

He wasn’t the only one. “No problem Sir.”

As Jim concluded the call, Blair emerged from the bathroom. Still unshaved and unkempt, and dressed again in his foraged clothes, he now looked exactly like the street bum he was pretending to be.

And he smelt it too.

As Jim’s nose registered its opinion, Blair himself was apparently far from unaware of how unsavory his aroma was. “Dial it down, Jim,” he directed, at Jim’s expression, then grimaced. “I wish  _I_  could!”

Jim complied willingly, then glanced at his watch.

“How long?” Blair’s voice was admirably calm.

“Four minutes.” Jim handed Blair the cell phone, which the other man took gingerly into his hands as though it was a bomb.

The scant minutes passed slowly, time slowing to a crawl. Finally, Jim looked over at Blair. “Call him,” he said.

His face set in a determined frown, Blair punched in the number, and Jim cranked up his hearing as the call connected.

“It’s me,” Blair said, before Buchanan even had a chance to speak. “I can’t take this any more, all right?” Belying his calm of a moment ago, Blair’s desperation didn’t sound forced. “I have no money, man, and I think the cops are on to me…”

 _“Whoa, Thomas!”_  Buchanan interrupted.  _“Slow down, son.”_

But Blair was on a roll. “Shut up. Just shut up, all right!” His voice cracked, and Jim debated whether he should try to get Blair to tone it down. Instead, he watched worriedly, hoping his partner could carry this off without raising suspicion. “I’ve had enough, okay?” Blair carried on. “I haven’t eaten for days, I’ve been beaten up, I’ve been robbed. I’ve had it with you making me run around, man! You let me see her – you let me see my mom, or I swear to god, I’m going to the cops to turn myself in. And I’ll tell them all about you as well, you bastard. I’ve had enough!”

There was silence on the other end of the phone as Blair stopped, breathing hard and gripping the phone like a lifeline. Jim longed to show him some support – even just to touch him on the shoulder – but held back. He didn’t dare distract him. 

Finally, Buchanan spoke, his voice lowered to soothing tones – although to Jim’s ears, he sounded poisonous as a snake.  _“Thomas, calm down. I want you to come see me. I know you’re tired, son. You’re upset. Meet me at the warehouse in one hour.”_

“Not unless you bring Naomi with you!”

_“Don’t push it, Tommy. I’m trying to help you, here.”_

“Forget it.” Blair’s voice was cold, determined. “You do what the hell you want - I’ve had enough of you pushing me around. I’ll see you in court, man.” And with that, he terminated the call.

 _What the…?_  “Sandburg!” Jim exploded, “What the hell are you doing?”

Blair turned to look at him, his expression hard. “You told me to use my powers of persuasion,” he said. “Let me do it my way, huh?” But despite the resolve in his voice, his hands shook.

Sandburg, as Jim knew well, was a pretty good poker player - a master of the bluff. But the stakes here were higher than any he’d played with before – Naomi’s life was in the balance. 

And up to now, Buchanan had been holding all the cards.

Tense silence descended, Blair looking down at the phone in his hand. A pulse beat visibly in his neck, counting down what might be the last few seconds Naomi had to live. And finally, Blair glanced up at Ellison, a world of pain in his eyes.

And with a shaking hand, he pressed redial.

***

It was going to work. It  _had_  to.

The call connected, and was answered in a heartbeat.  _“Don’t you_  ever,” Blair’s father demanded,  _“hang up on me again!”_  

Blair ignored the threat implicit in Buchanan’s words. “Bring Naomi with you. Last chance, man. You agree to this, or I’m hanging up right now and calling 911.” Blair’s utter  _terror_  that he was making the biggest mistake of his life lent fervor to his demand. “Bring her with you, or it’s all over.”

 _“You call the cops, Thomas, and you know what’ll happen to you?”_  Buchanan’s voice was hard.  _“They’ll lock you up and throw away the key. You’re a wanted man. There is nothing, no evidence_  at all  _to tie me to the robberies. But you, on the other hand? The evidence is there in spades. Your cop buddies have turned on you – and you have no one_  – no one –  _apart from me who can help you.”_

“I don’t give a damn what happens to me!” Blair’s pent up rage, fear, and humiliation burst free. “I’ve had it, all right? I give up! The  _only_  person I care about right now is Naomi.”

 _“You’d better listen to what I’m saying, Tommy-boy. Because if you don’t? I could kill your mother right now.”_  

The chilling words - even though Blair expected them - almost robbed him of breath. Ruthlessly thrusting aside his fear, he retorted, “You know what? I don’t care! She’d be better off dead, than living the rest of her life with  _you._  So just go ahead and do it, okay? I’m not playing any more!”

 _“Don’t push me, son,”_  Buchanan answered darkly.

They were at an impasse, but Blair couldn’t afford to back down. “I’m gonna count to ten, man. Then I’m hanging up and calling the cops. I won’t give you another chance.”

There was a pause, and just as Blair mentally reached ‘nine’, Buchanan spoke.  _“I’m impressed,”_  he said, the menace of a moment ago completely absent from his voice, replaced by what sounded like respect.  _“I was hoping that this situation might push you a little; make a man of you. I see that my hopes for you were not misplaced. I’m proud of you, son. Well done.”_  

Hatred rose in Blair, and he ruthlessly suppressed it. Instead, he allowed a waver of uncertainty to creep into his voice, to let the bastard think he’d scored a point. That Blair was desperate enough to somehow crave this man’s approval. “What do you mean, you’re proud of me? I… I don’t understand.”

 _“Tommy.”_  Buchanan's smug confidence turned Blair's stomach.  _“This whole thing was all a test. A test of your strength and courage. You’ve surpassed my expectations, and endured longer than I ever could have believed. And you’ve proved to me that you have guts, son – you took a stand; stood up for yourself, despite what you thought the consequences to your mother might be. And I'll be honest about that, son, I was bluffing. I'd never hurt her like that. But you thought I would, and you stood up to me anyway. You’ve passed the test, Tommy. With flying colors. You should be very proud of yourself.”_

Jim’s supposition about Buchanan’s demands had been, Blair realized, absolutely on the ball. But not only had this whole farce been some kind of twisted punishment – the guy thought he’d done Blair a  _favor_. That putting Blair through this ordeal had been a character-building experience. And now Blair was being rewarded by his father’s approval - for which he was expected to be  _grateful_. Forcing down his murderous urges - and wondering, as he did so, how he could ever have been so fucking  _scared_  of this sick bastard – Blair played along. “I’m so tired.” He allowed a tremor to creep into his voice. “I haven’t slept for days, man.”

 _“I know, son.”_  Buchanan paused; then, in a tone dripping with sympathy, said,  _“It’s time to come home where you belong. You can eat, get some sleep. You can be with your mom and me. You’ll be safe from the cops. I know this has all been difficult for you – but everything is going to be all right from now on.”_

“Home?” Blair queried. 

_“I’ll take you there. Meet me at six o-clock at the warehouse. We’ll all meet there - it’s high time I got my family back together. We can go on home together - all three of us – afterwards.”_

“You’ll bring Mom to the warehouse?” Blair’s relief wasn’t faked.

 _“I’ll bring her,”_  Buchanan confirmed.  _“And Thomas,”_  his voice softened, became gentle.  _“It’s all over, son. It’s going to be all right. You're not alone any more – your cop buddies might have forsaken you, but I haven't. I’ll take care of you from now on. I’ll take care of_  both  _of you. It's what family is for.”_

Blair wanted to puke. Instead, he gasped, “Thank you.” 

 _“I love you, Tommy.”_  The words made Blair shudder with revulsion.  _“See you within the hour. Your mother and I will be waiting.”_

“Okay.” Blair could manage to sound a little tearful, as though he had always longed for his father’s approval and love, and that this offer of sanctuary actually  _meant_  something. But he was damned if he was going to return the sentiment, no matter how good a liar he was. No fucking  _way_.

After farewells had been made – insincere to the nth degree on his part - Blair terminated the call. He stood for a moment, teeth clenched, his fingers cramping around the phone where he held it in a death grip. He was aware of Jim’s eyes on him, watching him with concern and god knew what else.

After a moment, Blair glanced toward his friend; but didn’t make eye contact. He really didn’t want to know what Jim thought of him after  _that_  little display of his masterful lying. “We’d better get moving, man,” he said, his voice calm, controlled, despite everything churning around inside. “The warehouse is across town, by the harbor. It’s on Union, near where I used to live – the old H & G shipping offices.”

Jim’s hand reached toward him, and Blair surrendered the cell phone. Jim pressed speed dial and, absently, Blair listened to the one sided conversation as the detective updated Simon on the situation.

Blair allowed himself to feel a little satisfaction. The only thing that mattered to him now was getting Naomi to safety. And soon, very soon, if all went to plan, Naomi  _would_  be free. He trusted absolutely that Jim could make that happen. 

And soon after  _that_ , Blair understood, it would all be over for  _him_. If he managed to get out of being sent to prison, it would be a miracle. But all he could feel, when he allowed himself to contemplate the future and the likely consequences of his actions, was numb. 

What might happen to him after Naomi was free was of no consequence – especially as he had already thrown away nearly everything that had ever had meaning to him. What was his liberty worth, in the face of the losses he’d already inflicted upon himself? What, for that matter, was his  _life_  worth?

At that moment, as Jim spoke on the phone to Simon, peace suffused Blair like an epiphany, dissolving his inner turmoil into nothingness. He’d do whatever he had to do to get Naomi free, even at the expense of his own life. Because  _he_  didn’t matter. Not any more.

That was the one thing, he realized, that he truly hadn’t lied to his father about.

***

Jim parked about half a mile away from the warehouse on Union. Sandburg would have to walk there on his own from here – a trip he didn’t envy his partner at all, under the circumstances.

Blair hadn’t spoken, apart from the odd monosyllabic word, since he’d gotten off the phone with Buchanan. But he seemed calm enough, for which Jim was grateful. Everything hinged on him being able to keep his cool; to maintain the pretense until Ellison and his backup moved in to deal with Buchanan.

After killing the engine, Jim turned to Blair. “Ready?” he asked, and Blair nodded. His expression was oddly serene. “Remember, your priority is keep Buchanan distracted – convince him that he’s beaten you; that you’re prepared to go along with anything he wants. Assuming the rumor Simon put out has got back to him, he’ll think you’re about to be arrested for the robberies.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll be listening,” Jim continued, “and I’ll try to get Naomi clear while you’re keeping him occupied. After that, we’ll all move in. And Chief,” Jim forced Blair’s attention, “you’ll have to try damn hard to make sure he doesn’t get the drop on you. The last thing we need is another hostage.”

Blair nodded. “Got it.” Something about Sandburg’s demeanor, as he opened the door and got out of the truck, bothered Ellison; but in the next second he shrugged it off. If Blair had found a measure of composure - well, that was a good thing, wasn’t it? It looked like the meditation Blair had done earlier had done the trick. He’d kept his head on the phone, achieved exactly what he had to achieve – a meeting with Buchanan, and a chance to get Naomi out of there. All he had to do was keep it together a little while longer.

Just before Blair closed the door, Jim halted him. “Hey,” he said. “I’ll be right behind you. Okay?” It was more than just a reminder of the logistics, and Jim hoped that Blair got the message.

Blair looked at him - a long look out of pale eyes. He smiled a little sadly. “Thanks, Jim,” he said softly. Reaching out his sense of hearing automatically, Ellison was surprised to note that Blair’s heartbeat was steady and slow.

Then the door slammed, an impenetrable barrier between them, and Ellison tracked Sandburg with his hearing as the distance between them grew with every step.

***

Blair walked straight up to the main entrance of the warehouse, following the path of memory. Inside, he moved unhesitatingly toward the circle of light which extended out from a glass-walled office off to the back. As he approached, there was movement, and a man-shape eclipsed the brightness in the office doorway.

Blair stepped into the light, squinting a little at its glare, to stand face to face with the dark figure silhouetted there; yin to his yang.

For a moment they both stood without moving. Then Buchanan shifted, and the light from the office window flooded his features; revealing the negative from which the picture of Blair’s own life had developed.

They were of a height; their body shapes perfect twins of each other. But his father’s curly hair was as short and white as Blair’s was long and dark. And, although Buchanan’s face was as familiar as the one Blair saw in the mirror each day; Blair’s own youthful smoothness of skin was marred, on his opposite number, by the marks of age.

This, Blair realized, would be exactly how he would look in thirty years time – assuming he lived that long. 

Buchanan was watching him just as measuringly. “Tommy,” he greeted, his voice and expression fond, as he held out his arms.

“Dad,” Blair acknowledged, feeling nothing but a sense of numb unreality. And without hesitation, he stepped into the embrace.

***

Simon was on the way, along with Rafe and Brown, but Jim had already moved in on foot, determined to prevent his partner from spending any more time than he had to in Buchanan’s clutches. 

A cursory scout around the building had revealed that the only accessible entrance was the main door at the front. A brief sensory sweep revealed three people inside. Blair and Buchanan could clearly be identified by their voices as they spoke to each other. And there was someone else in a different part of the building, identifiable by a slow and steady heartbeat, typical of sleep or unconsciousness. It had to be Naomi.

As he slipped through the front entrance, Jim could hear snatches of conversation coming from what appeared to be an office in the back, and was encouraged from what he heard that Blair had so far been successful in convincing Buchanan that he’d given up.  _“It’s all over, man,”_  Blair was saying, desperation and exhaustion in every word.  _“My life here, everything. You’ve gotta help me.”_

 _“That’s what I intend to do,”_  Buchanan replied. As Jim made his way stealthily through the building toward where Naomi seemed to be, he shamelessly listened in.  _“We’re going to make a fresh start – all three of us. You’ll be my partner, son – just like you were always supposed to be.”_

Jim reached the door to what looked like a storeroom, the deep breathing of the sleeping woman inside loud in his ears. He was pleased to discover, when he twisted the handle, that the door was unlocked. But his delight at that discovery was obliterated in the next moment when, as the door cracked open, he smelled the unmistakable odors of fresh blood and cordite coming from within.

Inside, two bodies lay on the floor – Dave Ratner, staring sightlessly at the ceiling through one eye, the other half of his face a dreadful mess of bone and blood; and his partner Antonio Dante beside him, mercifully unconscious but, due to the matching gunshot wound to his head, clearly close to breathing his last. 

It was the last thing Jim saw before the world went dark.

***

There was a foul taste in Jim’s mouth. It was something familiar, something he’d encountered before; the sense memory of it loaded with images of khaki and gunfire.  _Fentanyl_ , his mind supplied – an opiate-based knockout gas he’d had experience with in the army.

It explained why he was lying half-insensible on the floor like this – but not why his hands were secured behind his back, the familiar bite of too-tight handcuffs almost cutting off the circulation to his hands. But, given the combination of factors, it was not hard to deduce that someone had done this to him. And until he got his head together and worked out what was going on, it was better that he play possum for a while.

Voices intruded on his returning awareness, and that was all it took to bring him fully back to the present. “You said you’d bring mom with you,” he heard Sandburg accuse, his voice uncharacteristically hard. “Where is she, man?”

“She’s here,” Buchanan asserted. “I suspected that our friend here might track you, so I took a few precautions. She’s waiting for us in one of the other offices. I put a white noise generator in with her.”

“Clever.” Blair sounded approving. “So, what made you think Jim’d track me here?”

“My contacts told me as much,” Jim heard Buchanan say, proving that Simon’s leak of information had worked – even though it seemed to have backfired somewhat, considering his current predicament. “A warrant was issued earlier for your arrest, and I have reason to believe that Ellison has been tracking you for days.”

“If you’d let me get off the streets, man,” Blair accused, “this would never have happened.”

“I told you why I did that, Tommy.” Buchanan’s voice was hard suddenly. “I wanted to see what you were made of, but not only that. You needed to be taught a lesson. You don’t go against me  _ever_. You ever turn on me again, like you did when you were a kid, and I’ll throw you to the wolves.”

There was a pause, loaded with meaning. Blair, when he spoke, was oddly meek. “I told you I was sorry for what I did.”

“You told me,” Buchanan agreed. “But I needed to know for sure that you meant it, boy.” His voice softened. “I know that your mother put you up to it, all those years ago. I know she forced you to talk to the Feds about me. You were just a kid, Tommy. And now you’ve paid - and so has she. She’s sorry now, too.”

In the silence that followed, Jim heard Blair swallow audibly; no doubt deeply affected by the implication that Buchanan had hurt Naomi.

It was time to step into the breach. Jim opened his eyes to find that, while unconscious, he’d been moved out into the main part of the warehouse. Father and son were standing off to one side of him and, as Jim moved, both of them turned to look at him. 

“Ah, the good detective awakes,” Buchanan noted sardonically. Addressing Jim, he asked, “Did you like my little trick? When you opened the storeroom door, you triggered my little surprise. Thanks to my son, I knew that it would only take a small amount of gas to knock you out. It worked like a dream.”

Jim hastily reminded himself that Buchanan had no clue of the extent of Jim’s knowledge about him. Time to play dumb, and keep Buchanan distracted, until Simon and his backup arrived. “Your son?” He looked from Buchanan to Blair. “Something you want to tell me, Sandburg?”

Blair swallowed. His eyes looked wild but, to Jim’s approval, he was still in control. “My name,” he said angrily, “is Thomas Buchanan; not ‘Sandburg’. And yeah man, this is my dad.” 

“Like father, like son, huh?” It was a taunt he’d used at least once already during this whole sorry mess, and Blair flinched visibly at Jim’s words, as though struck. 

It was Buchanan who answered. “Tommy is more like me than he ever realized. He’s proved that. Haven’t you, son?” Moving close to Blair, Buchanan put an arm around his son’s shoulder. “You’ve learned that when provided with the proper motivation, you will do anything, and use anybody, to achieve your ends.” His voice became soft. “Isn’t that right, Tommy?”

Blair’s eyes were closed, his face crewed up, as though in pain “Yeah,” he gasped out.

Buchanan hadn’t finished, and Jim had to extend his hearing to catch what he was saying. “You broke the law to protect your mom, Tom. You turned on your friends, turned your back on your career, all to protect your mother. You’ve proved that your loyalty is to your  _family_ , and nothing and  _no-one_  else matters to you.”

Buchanan pulled Blair into an embrace. “And your family are here for you, Tommy,” Buchanan murmured as he held his son. “This guy – your so-called friend – was so ready to think the worst of you. He’s here for one reason only – to throw you in jail, as though everything you ever did for him is meaningless. But despite what you did to me, despite your mother making you testify against me; despite the fact that the two of you caused me to lose years of my life in prison, I  _still_  love you. I  _forgive_  you. And that, Tommy, is what family is all about.” 

This sick bastard knew, Jim realized, exactly how to hit Blair where it hurt. “Blair,” he said sharply. “Don’t listen to him!”

Blair pulled away from Buchanan slowly, and glanced at Jim, his expression equal parts misery and anger. “He’s right, Jim,” he said, something desperate and terrifying in his tone. “God help me, he’s right.”

This wasn’t in the script, and Sandburg’s apparent turnabout chilled Jim to the bone suddenly. “Blair-” 

“Don’t call me that, damn it!” Sandburg’s furious shout cut Jim off. His hand gestured wildly, punctuating his anger. “Just shut the hell up, okay? My name,” Blair’s eyes bored into Jim’s, “is Thomas Buchanan, man! Not Blair! ‘Blair’ never existed, okay? He was a fantasy, a role I played. And you know what? He’s _dead_.” Blair’s voice lowered, the anger turned to grief. “He’s gone, and this is who I am now.” He swallowed, his voice choked. “This is what I was meant to be.”

“Chief.” Jim tried to get Blair’s attention. “I know you don’t buy this nature versus nurture crap. Listen to me, damn it! He’s just trying to play on your emotions, okay? Don’t listen to him.”

But Blair shook his head. “I’m through listening to you, man. You think you know me?” He laughed, the sound entirely without humor. “You never knew me at all. All I ever was to you was a means to an end.” The bitterness in the words was almost palpable. “Someone you could use up and throw away.” 

“Blair,” Jim protested, “That’s not true.”

“Yeah?” Sandburg laughed nastily. “You think I don’t know that you totally despise me, man? You never even gave me a chance to tell my side of the story – you couldn’t wait to get the cuffs on me and take me in. Well, you know what? I’m through with you, Jim. You turned on me, just like my dad said. You didn’t care about what was going on with me at all. And for that,” his eyes bored into Jim, the truth in them undeniable, “I fucking  _hate_  you.” And with that, he turned away, leaving Jim reeling in the aftermath.

Buchanan was smiling with satisfaction. “Family, Detective Ellison,” Buchanan said, “is a powerful thing.” Reaching one hand behind him, he pulled out a revolver. “Thomas,” he beckoned. 

Blair turned to look at him, after first shooting a contemptuous look Ellison’s way. “Yeah?” he said.

“Everything is organized, son. There’s a plane standing by to take the three of us out of the country - it’s time for us to make a new start. But before we do that, there’s one last loose end to tie up. And I want you to be the man to deal with it.” Buchanan smiled coldly, the hard set of his eyes nothing like Blair’s at all. “See it as the final part of your test. To sever the final tie to your old life, and become the man I always wanted you to be.”

Glancing once more at Jim, his expression as hard as his father’s, Sandburg reached out and took the gun Buchanan was holding out. Realizing just how desperate this situation now was, Jim wondered desperately where the hell his backup had got to.

Then, it became too late to wonder. Blair unhesitatingly brought the gun up, and pointed it at Jim. “Who said,” his former partner murmured, “that blood is thicker than water?”

Wounded beyond words by the hatred in Blair’s face, Jim closed his eyes.

In the next second, the gun went off.

***

Jim was still alive – that fact was patently obvious. But when he opened his eyes, he found that Buchanan hadn’t been half so lucky.

Buchanan’s body was sprawled on the floor at Blair’s feet. The shot had been taken at pointblank range, and Sandburg had aimed for the chest. Exactly, in fact, as Jim had taught him, when he’d ensured - despite his civilian partner’s aversion to guns - that Sandburg had known how to handle firearms properly. Just in case he might need to fire a gun some day, in the course of watching Jim’s back.

Tearing his eyes away from the body – and the guy had, quite clearly, died instantly, the bullet carving an unerring path through his heart – Jim looked up at Sandburg. His partner was staring down at Buchanan, the proverbial smoking gun still in his hand. 

“Hey,” Jim said softly. “Chief. Get me out of these cuffs, huh?”

Sandburg didn’t move, or look away from the corpse. In an oddly toneless voice, he said, “The keys are on the desk, back in the office.”

“Go get them, huh?” Sandburg didn’t move. “Blair?”

Sandburg shook his head. “I, uh, can’t do that right now, man.” He was hefting the revolver in his hand, as if testing its weight.

“Blair,” Jim said sharply, a flash of chilling insight lending urgency to his words. “Put the gun down.” He tried to struggle upright, but the aftereffects of the gas made the room spin dizzily, and he slumped back down. 

Blair was gazing at the weapon in his hand. “I’m a murderer, man,” he said softly. “Even if I’d managed to get away with helping him, there’s no way out of this. Murder one, witnessed by a police officer. That’s life, right?”

“You were defending me, Sandburg,” Jim spoke urgently, mentally cursing his weakness. “Defending yourself.”

“He’s unarmed.” Blair swallowed. “I can’t let you lie for me. There… there have been enough lies.”

“Chief, come on. Put the gun down. Help me out, here.”

“I’m sorry.” Emotion finally began to creep in. “I can’t do that, Jim.”

“So this is it, huh?” Jim’s absolute  _terror_  that Sandburg would do what he seemed to be threatening to do, exploded in the form of rage. “You gonna shoot yourself, huh? You’re going to say all that stuff about how you hate me, and then you’re just gonna off yourself? How do you think that’s gonna make me feel?”

“I… I didn’t mean it.” Sandburg still wouldn’t look at him. “I was trying to convince  _him_  – that’s all, man!”

“You look me in the eye, Sandburg,” Jim hissed. “You look at me, and you tell me there weren’t a few home truths in what you said.”

He’d hit a nerve, just as he’d hoped he would. God knew, Sandburg had hit a few of his own. Sandburg’s hands trembled, and his face crumpled.

But he still wouldn’t look at Jim.

Casting aside his own reaction to what that refusal meant, Jim forced his mind to what he had to do. He’d managed to divert Sandburg’s attention - now he had to drag him back from the brink. 

It was time to play the ace up his sleeve. 

“Your mom needs you, Chief.” Shamelessly, Jim played on Sandburg’s worst fear. “She’s in the third office along. She’s hurt, Blair, and I can’t help her. Not like this.” His voice softened. “Help her, Blair. She needs you.”

Finally –  _finally_  – Blair looked at him, his expression lost. “Jim,” he pleaded helplessly.

Jim nodded. “It’s okay, partner,” he said gently, compelling Blair’s attention. “It’s going to be okay. Get me free, huh? And we’ll go take care of Naomi.”

And finally, as Blair sighed shakily and put down the gun beside the dead body of his father, then turned to retrieve the handcuff keys from the office, Jim allowed himself to believe that it might, at long last, be so.

***

It was all a goddamned, convoluted, unholy mess. And that was the best thing that Simon could find to say about it.

Well – perhaps not the best thing. The bastard who’d caused it all was, by now, lying on a slab in the morgue. That part, at least, was pretty damned good.

Pacing in the hospital waiting room, surreptitiously keeping tabs on Jim Ellison - who was sitting stony-faced across the room - Simon pieced together the events of the last few hours. And he wondered how the hell he was going to manage to do damage control on  _this_  particular disaster.

He cursed the twist of fate which had delayed the arrival of himself and his two detectives at the warehouse earlier. The two cars they’d been traveling in, which had only been scant minutes behind Ellison, had come upon a catastrophic road accident just seconds after it had happened. As the first officers on the scene, and with multiple civilian lives at stake, they had been duty bound to stay there and take the situation in hand. 

Normally in circumstances like that, Simon would have called in alternative backup for Ellison, and directed them to proceed to his original destination. But since he needed to keep the situation with Buchanan contained, it had been a judgment call not to follow regular procedure. Instead, Banks had taken command at the scene of the accident  _only_  until sufficient alternative personnel had arrived to take over, and had then ordered Rafe and Brown to leave and follow him to the warehouse.

They had lost nearly an hour and, during that time, it had all gone to hell in a handbasket.

The three of them had arrived at the warehouse to find that Blair had, according to Ellison, shot and killed Joe Buchanan. Naomi was a broken mess, weeping on her shocked son’s shoulder. And there were two dead cops in a back room, killed execution style by single gunshots to the head, presumably by Buchanan. 

Keeping this mess contained had just become nothing more than a fantasy.

Christ, what a fuck up.

“Detective Ellison?” Simon’s reverie was interrupted by the entrance of a diminutive white-coated woman. 

Ellison stood. “That’s me,” he confirmed.

The doctor moved forward to shake Ellison’s hand and, as she glanced Simon’s way questioningly, Ellison made the introduction. “This is Captain Simon Banks.”

The doctor nodded. “I’m Doctor Shaw. Mr. Sandburg asked me to tell you what was going on with his mother.”

“How’s Naomi?”

“Ms Sandburg is reasonably comfortable right now. We’re moving her to a room, and we’ll be keeping her in for at least a couple of days until we get her electrolytes balanced. She appears to be malnourished, and has numerous contusions, which we’ve treated, but she’s not in any immediate danger. I’ve also recommended to her that she avail herself of our counseling service before she is discharged – we have rape counselors, as well as specialists in victim support, on staff. She, ah, this is rather delicate.”

“Go on.”

“She refused to allow a rape kit. Mister Sandburg asked me to tell you that he supports her decision.”

Banks shared a grim look with Ellison. Even though Buchanan was dead, they were losing vital evidence - which proved the extent of his hold over Blair - by that omission.

“Can we see her?” Jim asked.

The doctor shook her head. “I wouldn’t advise it – she’s on some medication which will make her sleepy, and she’s not really up to being questioned right now. With someone traumatized like she has been, I recommend a softly, softly approach. Perhaps you could come back to see her in the morning?”

“What about Sandburg?” Simon put in. “Blair, her son,” he clarified, as the doctor turned to him. “Technically, he’s a protected witness. One of us needs to stay with him, and I’m presuming he’s staying with her.”

“There’s a patients’ lounge on that floor,” she conceded. “You can wait there while he’s with her. Will that do?”

“That’ll be fine.” Jim’s words were clipped. “Thank you.” Then, as the doctor moved away and out of earshot, he looked at Simon and queried, “‘Protected witness’?”

“What did you want me to say, Jim?” Banks demanded. “He just killed his father, after helping him to collect a haul of stolen artifacts? He’s under arrest?”

“ _Is_  he under arrest?”

Banks ran a tired hand over his face. “What do you think?”

Jim looked as grim as Simon felt. “I think it’s only a matter of time.”

“Well  _I_  think,” Banks said, skirting the issue for all he was worth, “I need to get out of here, and do my job.” He sighed unhappily. “What a goddamned mess. Even without the rest of it, we have two dead cops. The press are going to be all over this. Not to mention IA, the Chief, the mayor…” He tailed off. Then, looking pointedly at Jim, said, “Keep an eye on the kid, okay? For now, this is still our case. I’ll try to keep the vultures away from him and Naomi until we know how we’re going to play it.”

“I will.”

And with that assurance ringing in his ears, Banks headed out. As he walked through the doors of the hospital and into the fresh air, he pulled out his cell phone and switched it on, intending to call Rafe and get an update on the situation at the warehouse. But it rang before he even had a chance to press speed dial. “Banks,” he barked.

 _“Captain, it’s me.”_  Henri Brown sounded as strained as Simon had ever heard him.  _“You’ve gotta get back here now, sir. The Feds are crawling all over our crime scene.”_

Jesus, just when he’d thought it couldn’t get any worse.

***

Simon couldn’t believe his eyes. The warehouse where, not a couple of hours ago, Blair Sandburg had shot Joe Buchanan dead, was, apparently, off-limits.

“What?” He didn’t try for one second to moderate his tone – the time for diplomacy had passed. “Let’s get one thing straight,” he growled at Special Agent Frank Gorham, the Federal officer who’d just told him to keep back. “This location is a crime scene. Until you goons arrived, it was  _my_  crime scene. Two cops were killed in there, by a third man who is  _also_  dead. What part of ‘this is my jurisdiction’ don’t you understand?”

Gorham didn’t seem perturbed by Banks’s antagonism. “I’m sorry, Captain Banks. If you have a problem, you’ll have to talk to my boss. In the meantime, this location is prohibited to all unauthorized personnel.”

Banks was about to respond, to say damn  _straight_  he wanted to talk to this guy’s boss, when his attention was drawn to movement, as several figures wearing Kevlar made their way into the taped-off building. “What the…” The words ‘Bomb Squad’ were emblazoned across the back of their vests, under the obligatory ‘F.B.I.’ lettering.

Someone else had approached while his attention was on the building. “Captain Banks?” The guy - a middle aged, expensively-suited man - was holding out a hand in greeting. “Assistant Director Jack Medina,” he introduced himself, as Simon grasped his hand in turn. “We spoke on the phone.”

This was a surprise – this was the guy who had originally put Buchanan away. Despite having spoken to Medina about what had happened to Blair all those years ago, Simon hadn’t expected him to show up. “You’re a long way from your field office,” he pointed out. Medina, as far as he knew, was based in San Francisco.

Medina smiled. “I work out of D.C. now. Have done for quite a while.” He nodded toward the building. “You could say that Joe Buchanan has been my life’s work. I spent years trying to get something on him, something I could use, way back when. I put the bastard away, made sure his family were taken care of. Then life moved on, while he rotted in prison, and I thought I’d seen the last of him. But after all of that, here I am again, still involved, at the end of his life. Can’t say I’m grieving about the loss, though. ”

“He escaped from custody,” Banks pointed out. “How the hell did that happen?”

Medina shrugged. “The threat he posed was underestimated, Captain Banks. Not everyone’s memory is as long as mine.”

Simon’s eyes were drawn back to the building. According to Rafe and Brown, the bodies of the three dead men were still in there – the Feds had arrived before the medical examiner, and he had been excluded from the warehouse just like everyone else. “Why are the bomb squad involved?” he asked.

“Buchanan was a devious bastard,” Medina answered, as he followed Simon’s gaze. “Trust me, they are here for a very good reason. All I can say, until we know for sure what’s in there, is that we’re lucky there are just three dead people in that warehouse, and not six.”

Simon looked at him sharply. “What the hell is going on?” he demanded.

“Come on.” Medina made a motion to shepherd Banks toward the black van parked just behind them. “Let’s take a seat inside, where we can talk in private. You and I have a lot to discuss.”

***

Jim was staring, unseeing, at a rack of information leaflets on the wall of the dimly-lit patients’ lounge, when he became aware of someone entering the room. Turning his head, he saw that Sandburg had finally left his mother’s side. 

A glance at his watch revealed that it was now almost three a.m., which came as some surprise. Jim had expected Simon to get back to them before now, but he guessed that he’d decided to give Sandburg this one night’s grace to sit by his mother. No doubt the Captain would be along in the morning, warrant in hand, unless some miracle took place to prevent it. He made a mental note to fix Sandburg up with a lawyer first thing in the morning – he didn’t think his partner had even considered it, closeted as he’d been with Naomi.

Blair didn’t appear to see Jim sitting there, concealed in the shadows as he was; and the pinched look on Sandburg’s face was an indicator that his mind, in any case, was emphatically elsewhere. So Jim took a moment to take in Sandburg’s appearance; to judge how well he was holding up.

The other man was dressed in scrubs; no-doubt supplied by some sympathetic person on the medical staff here, and infinitely better than the stinking clothes he’d put back on to get close to Buchanan. His hair was tied back off his face, the resulting ponytail tangled in a rough knot at his nape; and he still sported the beard that had grown during the past few days. 

Jim watched as Blair walked over to the water cooler in the corner of the room, one hand rubbing over his face in an exhausted gesture before fumbling a cup from the dispenser. His hand, Jim noted, was shaking as he filled it and, concerned, Jim ventured, “Everything okay, Chief?” 

The half-filled cup went flying, as Sandburg almost jumped out of his skin. “Jim!” he exclaimed as he whirled, wild eyed and white faced, his heart audibly pounding in shock. “Don’t do that, man!”

“Sorry.” Contrite, Jim stood, and moved over to grab some paper towels. He cleaned up the mess Sandburg had made, putting the fallen cup in the trash while Sandburg occupied himself with filling another one. 

Getting a drink for himself, Jim moved over to where Blair had now flopped tiredly down, and sat in a chair opposite. “How’s Naomi doing?” he asked. 

Blair raised red rimmed eyes from where they’d been focused on the floor. “She’s sleeping,” he said shortly. Then, perhaps recognizing the genuine concern in Jim’s bearing, he added, “She, ah, she’s pretty amazing. She’s hurt and upset, yeah; but she’s all for moving forward, being positive. Says she’s glad it’s over; that we don’t have to hide from  _him_  any more.”

That oblique reference to the demise of his father came with a visible flash of agony that Sandburg couldn’t hide. Wanting to give some encouragement, Jim observed, “I see where you get that from, Chief. That ability to put the bad stuff to one side and move on. You and her – you’re both pretty resilient people.”

“Yeah, well.” Blair’s voice became hard, sharp with self-condemnation. “I got a whole lot of different things from someone else. And at the moment that’s what matters, man.”

There was silence a moment, Then Jim asked, “Does she know? What happened to Buchanan, I mean?”

Blair swallowed, and nodded. “I wasn’t going to tell her, but she worked it out.”

“How did she react?”

“She tried to make me agree it was self-defense.” He shook his head miserably. “She’s wrong, man. It wasn’t anything like that.” 

“Chief-”

The sympathy in Jim’s voice was apparently too much for Sandburg. He glanced at Jim, his expression anguished. “Don’t, okay?” he pleaded. “I  _know_  what I did! I can’t even claim insanity, Jim – I knew  _exactly_  what I was doing.” 

Jim swallowed the lump in his own throat.  _Nothing_  about what had happened was as simple as Blair seemed to think, but his partner seemed determined to indulge in self-flagellation anyway. Jim was worried that Blair would needlessly immolate himself once he was in custody, confessing to murder without allowing for the considerable mitigating circumstances to be taken into account. All he could hope was that a good defense lawyer – and he intended to appoint one shortly, expense be damned – would be able to talk some sense into Sandburg before he threw himself on the flames.

Wanting, at least, to show some support right now, Jim murmured softly, “Hey.” Blair’s head snapped up, his gaze drawn away from the floor, his misery clear. “We’ll get through this, buddy. You’re not alone.”

For a moment, Blair looked almost as though he might cry. But he shook himself out of it. “I, ah, appreciate that, Jim,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. Then he stood up. “But please, man, don’t try to make me feel better, all right? I can’t handle it right now.” He moved towards the door. “I, uh, I gotta get back. She might wake up, and I don’t want her to be alone.” 

As Blair exited, Jim let out his breath in a heartfelt sigh. And he prayed fervently for a miracle.

***

Whatever they’d given Naomi, it was making her sleep restfully, at least. 

Blair watched her as she lay relaxed in repose, her face bathed now in the emerging light of dawn which seeped in through the blinds. Her features were, he noted, unmarked - unlike the rest of her body, under the hospital gown, which was covered in the evidence of sustained, systematic violence.

Joe Buchanan had always been a master at making sure that nothing showed on their faces.

The thought of his father – his dead father – strangely failed to elicit any feeling in Blair beyond a sense of numb unreality. It was as though everything he’d been through had reached saturation point - the intense mix of emotions somehow canceling each other out; leaving nothing behind but this blank _nothingness_. He’d been afraid for so long; so ashamed of himself and so full of hatred, for what felt like  _forever_. Now that it was finally over – and now that Naomi was safe and free of her lifelong tormentor forever - it was all gone. All of it. He didn’t even feel the slightest hint of guilt.

Blair sighed. He should - he knew that. The old Blair would have felt guilty. That was the measure of how much he had changed.

He should also, he knew, be concerned for himself. He was facing prison, possibly for the rest of his life. Not only had he betrayed his best friend and been complicit in the robberies - he’d also shot a man in cold blood.  _Patricide_  was, in fact, the correct term for the latest and most heinous crime he’d committed. The word was as ugly and unnatural and horrifying as the act itself; an unspeakable offense, utterly anathema to civilized society. He should be feeling intense shame at what he’d done.

But glancing up, seeing the encroaching day dawning bright outside the hospital windows, all he could feel at the moment was  _tired_  - a bottomless, aching exhaustion. And he wished that he could close his eyes right now, and never have to open them again.

But he couldn’t do that. He wouldn’t.

He’d done so many things wrong. Blinded by his fear for Naomi, he’d been prepared to sacrifice everything he cared about, everything he  _was_ , to save her from a fate worse than death. In the end, he’d made the ultimate sacrifice – his own soul. He’d murdered a man. And in doing so, he’d simultaneously killed Blair Sandburg – because the Blair he’d invented - the compassionate, ethical man whose character he’d fabricated and whose life he’d embraced - would never have done what  _he_  had done.  _Blair_  was dead – killed the very same moment he’d pulled the trigger to shoot his own father.  _Thomas Buchanan_ , on the other hand, would pay the price. And he would face the penalties he’d incurred with as much dignity as he could muster, because he owed at least that much to the people he’d hurt.

Blair – no,  _Thomas_  – was forced to acknowledge that maybe he did feel  _some_  guilt after all, since he was so determined to pay for it. Otherwise, it would be so easy – so seductive – to just give up. Just as he almost had back in the warehouse, before Jim had forced him to focus on what really  _mattered_. 

“Sweetie?” The querulous voice brought him abruptly back from his mental meanderings. Naomi was awake, and was gazing up at him, her face awash with sorrow.

“Hey!” He forced a smile onto his face, keeping his voice gentle. “It’s okay, Mom,” he soothed. “You’re safe.”

The sorrow remained. “I know, honey.” Naomi’s hand reached out, and Blair clasped it between his own, holding it gently like a fragile, precious thing. “Blair, sweetheart,” she went on. “Have you been sitting there all night?”

He nodded. “Yeah.” He held her eyes with his own, his love for her surging up from the depths of his despair. “I won’t leave you.”  _Until I’m taken away_ , his inner voice supplied.

“Oh, baby.” Naomi squeezed his hand, her grip surprisingly strong. “Why don’t you lie down, and get some sleep? I’ll be fine.”

“It’s okay, Mom. I… I just want to sit with you.” He hadn’t slept, despite being told he could use the second bed in the room if he needed to rest. He was pretty certain that this had been his final night of liberty, and he hadn’t wanted to waste a second of their last few precious hours together. 

“Blair…” Naomi’s voice was soft, her eyes full of love and compassion; the whole thing reminding Blair of so many times she’d comforted him, when the tables had been turned, and  _he’d_  been the target of his father’s wrath instead of her. Only then he’d been  _Thomas_ , god damn it, not Blair. Like he was now. Like he….

The world blurred and, to his intense shame, everything he’d been clinging onto, all of the tangled threads he’d used to hold himself together for so long, abruptly snapped. He tried to speak, to say how sorry he was that he couldn’t even manage this one, final, small thing – to be strong for Naomi in the immediate aftermath of her ordeal. But the words got obliterated, their meaning lost in the strangled sobs that spewed forth, unbidden.

Exhausted, desperate, humiliated and so,  _so_  fucking sorry, he laid his head in his arms beside his mother on the bed, and finally let it all go. And like he had so many times as a child, he listened to her tell him it would be okay, that she loved him; that it wasn’t his fault. And even though he knew that her words of love and encouragement changed  _nothing_ , he shamelessly took what little comfort he could from her voice, and the sensation of her fingers as they stroked gently through his hair.

***

Jim had finally managed to get a couple of hours shut eye in the patients lounge. Now it was just after shift change, and the sounds of breakfast being brought up to the ward and the beginning of early morning med dispensing had jarred him to full wakefulness.

After a quick splash of water on his face, he headed toward Naomi’s private room. Neither the breakfast cart nor the nurse on duty had gotten this far down the corridor yet, and he was hoping to take Blair off for some breakfast, so Naomi could have some privacy when they arrived.

He had another motive for taking Blair off as well – he needed to find out if his partner’s sense of self-preservation had finally kicked back in this morning. And if he found that Blair was  _still_  suffering from a tendency to throw himself to the wolves, he intended to make it  _very_  clear exactly how unacceptable that was.

Arriving at Naomi’s room, and peering through the door, he saw that Naomi was both awake and aware of his presence. “Come on in, Jim,” she said softly, before looking back down tenderly at the figure slumped beside her; one of her hands gently twirling a strand of curly hair that had escaped Blair’s hair tie.

Blair, it seemed, was gone for the world. His mouth was slack in sleep, his face tear stained. He was still half sitting on the chair beside the bed, his head and shoulders slumped forward onto the mattress beside his mother, one arm flung over her stomach in a sprawled embrace. “He looks pretty uncomfortable,” Jim remarked, peering at him for a moment, before looking up at Naomi.

Naomi was watching with an indulgent expression. “You care for him very much,” she observed, still idly toying with one of Blair’s curls as she smiled tiredly up at Jim.

“I guess I do,” Jim admitted. Then he asked gently, “How are  _you_  doing?” 

“I’ll survive.” She sounded like she meant it. “I have a few more demons to battle, but mostly, I’m relieved it’s over. It’s  _finally_  over.”

“Yeah,” Jim agreed softly. “It is.”

“But not for  _him_.” Her eyes shimmering with unshed tears, Naomi looked down fondly at her son, then back up at Jim. “What’s going to happen to him, Jim?” she pleaded.

“I don’t know. But I promise you, I’ll do whatever I can for him, Naomi.” The conviction in Jim’s voice echoed the resolve he’d nurtured overnight. “I have contacts - I’ll be able to get him a good lawyer, and I’ll do my damnedest to make sure he’s treated fairly.”

She nodded her gratitude. “Thank you,” she whispered. “He’s…” her voice broke a little. “He’s been hurt enough.”

“Yeah. I know.” He paused. Then pointed out, “So have you.”

A tear escaped. “I know.”

Moving around to the opposite side of the bed to where his partner slumbered, Jim found a box of tissues on the nightstand. Pulling a couple out, he handed them to Naomi. “Here you go,” he said.

“Thanks.” Naomi left off petting Blair to wipe her eyes, then blew her nose loudly – the unladylike snort somehow failing to wake her son. “Look at me,” she exclaimed, throwing up her hands in self reproach as more tears leaked out. “I’m a mess!”

“No. You’re not.” The conviction was back in Jim’s voice. He handed her more tissues. “You’re a survivor. Just like your son.”

She took them gratefully. “I guess I am.” She sniffed, wiping her eyes. “I’ll get through this, like I got through the last few years. There are places I can go, healing I can get. I’m not so sure about Blair, though. It’s going to be hard for him to bounce back from this.” She deposited the used tissues in the trashcan Jim held up for her. “He’s going to need help,” she said pointedly. “And I love my son. But I’m not in the best shape right now to provide it.”

Jim caught her eye. “He’ll get help,” he said. “I promise.”

“I hope so.” But Jim’s assurance seemed to have calmed her somewhat. “There are some things I need to tell you, some people you should contact-”

“Ms Sandburg?” Simon’s voice, which interrupted suddenly from the doorway, made Naomi jump; and Jim put out a comforting hand to her reflexively. “May I come in?” 

She recovered quickly. “Captain Banks, of course you may.” But her eyes drifted sadly over Blair’s sleeping form as she spoke. The look of grief that crossed her face echoed the way that Jim’s own heart sank at Simon’s appearance, and what that implied for Blair. Time was just about up, it seemed.

It looked like he’d better get on the phone and find a lawyer, pronto.

***

Someone was shaking him. “Hey, c’mon, Sleeping Beauty. Rise and shine.”

Couldn’t Jim see that he was tired? Blair irritably brushed off the hand that was on his arm. “Five more minutes, man,” he mumbled.

Jeez, this bed was uncomfortable. What was up with that?

“Wake up, honey.” 

Now  _that_  wasn’t Jim. Oh man, what was his mom doing here?

Oh... Shit. 

Blair sat up abruptly as memory returned, careering into a major head rush. “Hey, whoa there, buddy.” Hands grabbed him, pulling his head and shoulders back against a hard body. “Take your time,” Jim went on, as strong hands kneaded his shoulders, their grip and the solid bulwark behind him keeping him from keeling over. 

Blair took a few deep breaths, trying to make the room stop spinning. Naomi was watching him worriedly from her bed, and Simon was standing across the room.

That latter fact brought him round fast, for sure. He was pretty certain the Captain wasn’t here for a social call.  _Time to get it together, Sandburg_ , he told himself sternly. 

He tried to shrug off Jim’s supporting hands. “I’m all right,” he protested, hoping he didn’t sound as flaky to everyone else as he did to himself. 

“Sure you are.” Jim didn’t let go. “Take it easy, all right? It’s quite a while since you ate anything, never mind the rest of it. Just give yourself a minute here.”

It was good advice, so Blair gave in gracefully. After all, he didn’t want to pass out in front of his mother. The fact that she was about to witness him being arrested was bad enough. He just hoped they wouldn’t put the cuffs on until he was out of her sight - that was  _definitely_  not the final image of him that he wanted to leave her with.

God, he was so tired. 

Simon was speaking, his voice a baritone drone; the words he was uttering not actually making sense to Blair’s exhausted brain. He found his awareness drifting, and must have dozed off again, because Jim’s voice, and a decisive shake of his shoulders by the hands that still held him upright, jarred him back to the present. “Hey, come on, Chief. Time to go. I’ll stay here with your mom for a while, okay?”

“Okay,” he agreed. That was good. Jim would take care of Naomi, explain to her what was going to happen to him. “You’ll, uh, look after her, right?” He tipped his head back, looked up at Jim. 

“Yeah, of course I will.” Jim’s expression was oddly tender. He patted Blair’s shoulder. “Go with Simon, huh? It’s going to be okay.”

“Okay,” he agreed. 

Simon was in front of him now, holding onto Blair’s forearm. “Up you get, Sandburg,” he said. 

As Blair rose – hauled upright by Simon and Jim as though he had no strength of his own – he looked across at Naomi. She was smiling at him, with an expression so full of love it tore at his heart. 

Ruthlessly, he swallowed the lump in his throat. He was  _not_  going to lose it again. No way. 

Instead he took her hand, grateful for the grip the other men had on him, since he felt weirdly shaky. “Hey,” he said gently, putting all the love he felt for her in the word. “I’ve, uh, got to go now. Jim’s going to stay here. He’ll take care of you. Okay?

Her hand squeezed his, her strength greater than his right now. “I’ll be fine, sweetie,” she told him. “Don’t worry.” 

She sounded so sure of that fact, so determined, and her resilience made him so damn proud. He wondered if she realized where Simon was taking him…. But no, he didn’t want to deal with that right now, coward that he was. He'd just let her think everything was okay - Jim could clue her in once he’d gone. He could trust his friend to break it to her gently. “I… I’ll see you later, okay? You get some rest.” 

“Sure, baby,” she said. “You too.”

Leaning down, Blair kissed her gently, then stood, squaring his shoulders. Simon and Jim had briefly let go of him when he’d bent down, but now the Captain’s solid grip was back on his arm.

Blair looked Simon in the eye. “Okay,” he said firmly. “Let’s go.”

Simon’s eyes widened, as though he was taken a little aback by Blair’s determination. Then he nodded, and began to move toward the door, maintaining his grip on Blair all the while.

As they went out of the room, Blair’s took a last, longing look at his mother. He watched as his best friend sat down by her side, taking up the post that Blair had held all night. And something inside of him eased at the sight – she was in good hands.

The very best.

***

Blair was surprised – and grateful – that Simon didn’t seem in a hurry to slap on the cuffs. The captain did, however, maintain his grip on Blair all the way through the building, and out into the parking lot. It was only when he unlocked the passenger door of his car that he let go. “Get in, Sandburg,” Simon ordered, as he moved around the front of the vehicle to the driver’s side.

Obediently, Blair did as he was told, buckling the seatbelt and not saying anything as Simon got in and started the car. He was aware, as their vehicle pulled out of the lot and turned into the road, of Simon directing several quizzical glances his way; but Blair ignored it, keeping quiet. What, after all, was there for him to say?

Blair felt oddly at peace, despite his predicament. His crying jag – humiliating though it had been – seemed to have vented off the immense pressure which had built up inside of him; leaving him feeling drained and empty. The intense fear he’d suffered for his mother, his terror of Joe Buchanan, and the years upon years of nightmares – all of it was  _finally_  over. 

The prospect of prison, he found, now that he had to face that certainty, didn’t really scare him. In fact, he acknowledged wryly, it would actually be a relief not to have to make any more decisions. What happened to him from now on would be totally outside his control - and there was something strangely comforting about that scenario. 

He smiled sadly at the thought. It was a feeling he was familiar with, he realized, now that his memories of the past were returning. The time he’d spent institutionalized as a teenager had provided him with a cocoon, in which he’d at long last been able to relinquish – for the very first time in his life - the adult-level responsibility he’d been forced to adopt throughout his childhood. This situation really wasn’t so different - although he knew that prison would be unlikely to provide anything like as nurturing an environment as the psychiatric hospital.

He drifted again, his exhaustion profound; not even the likelihood that this journey was his last as a free man – since he had not yet been formally arrested - being enough to keep him awake and aware. 

Simon’s voice brought him back to himself. “Wake up, Sandburg,” he was saying. “We’re here.” 

The car’s engine had been switched off and, blindly, Blair opened the door and got out, only partially aware of Simon doing the same thing on the other side. He took a deep breath, and forced himself to focus on his surroundings, expecting to find that they were in the parking garage at the PD.

“What the…” He looked around dazedly, unable for a moment to take in what he was seeing. “Uh, Simon,” he said, blinking stupidly. “What’s going on, man?” He looked up at the familiar building opposite. “This, uh, this is Prospect.” 

“Yes, Sandburg, it is. Your powers of observation never fail to astound me.” 

“Why are we here?”

Simon came round to join him. He nodded across at 852. “You do still live there - correct?”

Did he? He wasn’t so sure, after what he’d done to Jim. But that was beside the point. “I thought we were going to the PD. Aren’t you going to arrest me?”

“Sandburg!” Simon sounded exasperated. “Didn’t you listen to a word I said? Back in the hospital?”

Blair tried to remember, but came up totally blank. He vaguely remembered Simon saying something, but had no idea what it was.

Blair’s silence apparently clued Simon in to the fact that he was floundering. An arm came around his shoulder, and the captain steered Blair gently but firmly toward the building. “Come on,” he said kindly. “I’ll explain again inside. And you’re going to eat, shower and sleep. Not necessarily in that order.” Blair stumbled, and strong arms caught him, kept him moving. “Not far now, Blair. You can rest soon. Everything’s going to be fine.”

Obediently, Blair let himself be led inside; putty in Simon’s hands.

***

A nurse arrived to tend to Naomi, just a few minutes after Blair and Simon had gone, so Jim left her alone for a while, taking the opportunity to consume a quick breakfast in the hospital cafeteria a couple of floors down. A short while later, fortified with coffee, he hungrily finished up a bagel with cream cheese, and two pieces of fruit. Then, taking a huge bite out of the bear claw he’d also purchased, he tried to work exactly out how long it had been since he’d actually eaten a decent meal. 

In deference to Blair’s express wish that he take care of Naomi, Jim kept part of his awareness trained on her room as he sated his hunger, blocking out the sounds only when the examination became more personal. He listened as her breakfast tray arrived, and monitored her absently while she ate. 

He still felt somewhat shocked at the unexpected turn things had taken. If all had gone down like he’d expected, he’d be on the phone right now, finagling the best damned lawyer he could find for Blair. But instead, here he was, eating a leisurely breakfast, and finally allowing himself to breathe a little easier. Simon’s unexpected revelation – that the Feds had taken over the Buchanan case, and were  _not_  at this time intending to pursue Blair on a murder charge – left him feeling totally floored.

Simon hadn’t said anything about whether or not Blair was to be charged for his involvement in the thefts, though. Tiredly, Jim took a sip of coffee, and sighed heavily. Until he knew more about what exactly was going on with that issue, he didn’t feel inclined to trust that it really  _was_  all over. What he really needed was to get Simon alone, so he could discover the things his captain had been unable to say in front of Naomi and Blair. And no doubt he’d find _himself_  being questioned by the Feds pretty soon too, which would give him a chance to ask them what the hell was going on.

Not surprisingly, given all that had happened, Blair had seemed to be in a pretty vulnerable state when he’d gone off with Simon. Jim wasn’t sure his partner had even comprehended what was happening. He fervently hoped that some food and rest, in the safe, familiar surroundings of his own home, would help Blair to gain back a little of his equilibrium. And in the aftermath of that? Well, he’d be there to see that Blair got the support he needed.

And Jim had no doubt that Blair  _would_  need help. No one could go through what Sandburg had gone through, and not be affected profoundly by the experience.

Taking a final gulp of coffee to wash down the anxiety he felt about his partner’s well-being, Jim rose, and headed back toward Naomi’s room.

***

Naomi was on the phone when he arrived back there. “I will,” she was saying. “Don’t worry.” She looked a little tearful – par for the course, after everything that had happened, Jim thought. “Midday. Uh huh. See you then, sweetheart. Bye.”

She apparently caught Jim’s quizzical look as she put the phone down, although he hadn’t intended to pry. “That was my friend, Fiona,” she said. “She’s coming to get me later. She runs a community for women who’ve been, well…” she faltered. “I’ve spent quite a bit of time there in the past, both as a resident and as a volunteer.”

Jim nodded his approval. “In Cascade, right?”

Naomi nodded. “Yes. Blair has the address; but I’ll leave it with you as well. Just in case… well, in case he’s mislaid it or something.” Her worry about her son was clear.

Jim sat down in the chair beside the bed. He wanted to take her hand, but thought better of it – she’d probably had enough unwanted touching to last a lifetime. “It’s okay,” he said softly. “I’ll take care of Blair, Naomi. You have my word. No matter what happens, I’ll see him though it.”

The tears were lingering in her eyes, but Naomi refused to give in to them. “He needs you so much,” she whispered. “Jim, you have no idea what it’s been like for him. Before we came to Cascade, he saw and experienced things no child should ever have to go through. And he feels so guilty about what he’s done – I’m so scared for him. And I’m…” She sniffed, holding back more tears with an apparent effort of will. “Like I told you, I’m not in the best shape right now to give him what he needs. I’m so worried about what will happen to him.”

Remembering the look on Blair’s face after he’d shot Buchanan, Jim had to admit that he was just as worried. Blair was a resilient guy, just as Jim had told him he was; but everyone had their limits. Blair had apparently reached  _his_  the moment he got Buchanan’s gun in his hand. Even if there was to be no legal sanction, the fallout from what he’d done with that gun would probably stay with him for the rest of his life - however long that might be.

And Jim suspected that, without serious intervention, Blair might not be able to live with it for very long at all.

“Don’t worry,” Jim told her sincerely. “I’ll be there for him. You have my word.” 

“I'm so glad he has you,” she said, her eyes wide and sad. "I know you love him".

“Yeah,” he admitted, only slightly discomforted at the intense sentiment. “He's my friend.” And it was time he made sure that Blair knew that too, he realized. Way beyond time. “I won’t let him go under, Naomi.”

“Thank you.” She swallowed. “And I have a suggestion, Jim. There’s a safe place he sometimes goes to, when things get to be too much for him. He has another friend there – a good friend. Maybe you can…?”

“Whatever he needs,” Jim assured her, suspecting, with a flash of insight, that he knew who she was referring to. 

But before he could ask any more about it, a voice from the doorway intruded. “Norma?” 

Jim turned, his protective hackles rising. “Who the hell are you?” He really didn’t need to ask – everything about the guy screamed ‘Fed’ – but he wasn’t about to let anybody near Naomi without a challenge, after everything that she’d been through.

But before the intruder could identify himself, Naomi spoke. “Jack,” she said breathlessly. “Oh my God, it’s you.” And Jim could only watch incredulously as the man walked into the room, to take Naomi’s outstretched hand in his own.

***

It was a good dream. Surfacing out of the depths of sleep, Blair had time to register that much before the heavy pain in his gut – the ever-present legacy of the past couple of weeks – kicked back in.

It was weird, he mused, as he looked up at the familiar pipes running across the ceiling of his bedroom – the bedroom he’d honestly believed he’d never see again. Weird how emotions like grief, and fear, and guilt actually hurt  _physically_. In Punjabi medicine, they called this sensation, this sick ache in the stomach and overwhelming, churning mass of anxiety,  _dil kirda dubda_ , or ‘sinking heart’. Despite his expertise in conventional Western psychology, Blair couldn’t think of a more appropriate way to describe the way he was feeling right now.

It was quiet as Blair lay there, the waning light indicating that evening was fast approaching. After Simon had forced some soup down him this morning, and steered him toward his bed, he’d clearly slept the whole day away.

For a while, Blair remained still, wishing to recapture the peace of his dream, the detail of which had already faded. To preserve the illusion of comfort and home and safety. But the demands of a full bladder - and the fact that his muscles had utterly lost whatever lax relaxation they’d gained during sleep to tighten already into fight or flight readiness - inspired him to move, so he rose from his bed with a regretful sigh.

It seemed, as he made his way across to the bathroom, that Simon had gone, as the loft appeared to be empty. That surprised him – despite Simon assuring him that he wasn’t going to be arrested (and the reason for  _that_  still eluded Blair) he didn’t think that the captain would actually leave him alone. But, peering around the counter, a cursory glance into the kitchen revealed Jim’s coat hanging on the peg, and the chain on the door. Jim was here, then; no doubt upstairs getting a bit of shut eye after the sleepless night he’d had, and the stress of the past few days. 

Blair was, he guessed, still under surveillance after all; and probably it was only a matter of time before he would be taken into custody. He shrugged, as he turned and entered the bathroom. That didn’t really surprise him - he  _was_  a murderer. The ache in his gut intensified at the thought of his crime, and he paused for a moment, holding on to the doorframe and breathing hard.

It occurred to him briefly, as he finally got himself together and closed the bathroom door, that Jim had obviously left Naomi’s side. He didn’t believe for a minute that Jim would have just  _abandoned_  her – he just wouldn’t do that - so maybe Simon had spelled him for a while. Blair vowed that, as soon as he was dressed – and as long as Jim understood he had no intention of running off or hiding from the consequences of his actions - he’d head back over to the hospital and take his place at her side again. He’d fucked everything else up. The very least he could do, would be to get  _that_  right – while he still had his liberty, at least.

He relieved himself, and moved over to the sink. The pale face staring back at him out of the bathroom mirror horrified him. A bearded man, with matted hair and hopeless eyes. 

A stranger.

A murderer.

Opening the bathroom cabinet with shaking hands, Blair got out a razor, and got to work.

***

Jim heard Sandburg get up and go into the bathroom. A quick look at the clock beside his bed confirmed that it was nearly seven o’clock in the evening. Rubbing a weary hand over his face, he wished he’d managed to get more than a couple of hours sleep since he’d gotten back from the PD. But he had to admit it was just as well they were both awake now – it gave them time to get some food inside them, before Jack Medina arrived to talk to Blair, as had been arranged that afternoon.

The day’s revelations had shocked him, to say the least. Buchanan had certainly been obsessive about the grudge he’d borne against his son all these years; but Medina’s grudge against Buchanan, it had turned out, was even  _more_  extreme. The guy had shaped his whole career, his whole adult  _life_ , for the purpose of taking Buchanan down. Now that really  _was_  obsession.

Jim rose, pulling on a robe as he went, and headed down to the kitchen. Opening cupboards and the fridge, he found soup and the makings of sandwiches, and started to prepare a meal. And as he moved about the familiar, comforting task, Jim reflected on what he’d learned today. 

Jack Medina and Norma Sanderson – now known as Naomi Sandburg - went back a long way, it turned out. They’d grown up in the same neighborhood, gone to the same schools, and had been destined to go to college together. Medina’s mother and Norma’s father had both been single parents (Julia Medina because of divorce, and Ben Sanderson through the tragic death of his wife), and had gotten close. And young Jack had regarded Norma as a virtual sister; until their teenage friendship had begun to morph into something more profound.

But then, it had all gone horribly wrong. Norma had been effectively sold off to Buchanan - an unwilling bride at the age of sixteen - so that her father could pay off his business debts. And not long after that, Ben Sanderson had eaten a bullet, unable to live with the shame of what he’d put his daughter though.

Julia Medina had been heartbroken at the death of the man she had grown to love, and the end of her dreams of a second chance. She’d suffered from depression on and off, ever since her divorce; and after her lover’s death, it made an unwelcome return. One day, about a month after Ben Sanderson’s suicide, Jack had come home to find her sprawled on her bed, an empty bottle of pills by her side and a tear-stained note of apology on the kitchen table.

At seventeen years of age Jack, therefore, found himself totally alone in the world, while the girl he loved was in the clutches of a sadistic, powerful gangster. It was a set of circumstances that might have destroyed a lesser youth, or inspired him to recklessness. But Jack Medina was smarter than that, and made of far sterner stuff.

Jack began to make plans. He nursed his hatred of Buchanan – the man who had robbed him of everyone he cared about – and transformed it into action. He fully understood that one seventeen year old boy was no threat to someone like Buchanan. So he bided his time, did the necessary research, and came up with a foolproof – if long term - plan. And he invested the modest financial legacy his mother’s death had left him in obtaining exactly the right sort of education to make it come to fruition.

Four years later, and a Masters’ degree in Criminal Psychology resulted in him being accepted into the training program at Quantico. A few years as an FBI field officer out east, specializing in criminal investigation and, in particular, organized crime; and Medina managed to finagle a transfer back to his home town of San Francisco. And finally, the pieces of his plan began to come together, when Medina started to gather the necessary evidence to finally take his nemesis down. 

Jack Medina had given, Jim thought, a whole new meaning to the assertion that revenge is a dish best served cold. Then, a couple of years after arriving back in San Francisco, fate had lent a hand in a totally unexpected way.

It was sheer luck that Thomas Buchanan had witnessed the murder of Samuel Gregory. Medina could not believe his eyes when the traumatized child was led into his office by Norma Buchanan, the testimony of the boy practically handing him Buchanan’s head – his holy grail - on a plate. At last, he had what he needed to deal with the man who had decimated his family life and transformed the carefree girl he’d loved into the terrified, bitter woman Norma had now become. 

Mother and son were swiftly ensconced in a safe house, and Jack mercilessly pushed the boy into testifying against his father. “I admit it,” Medina had said to Jim earlier, “I pushed him too hard. I could have used more sensitivity in how I handled that boy. But all I could see, at the time, was everything I’d wanted, everything I’d worked for, coming to a head. Buchanan’s criminal empire dismantled, Norma away from him for good, and the good-for-nothing bastard behind bars, where he belonged. Or,” he’d admitted, “preferably dead. I’ve never wished more sincerely for a suspect to resist arrest.”

Jim could understand the sentiment, at least. But he hated the fact that Blair had been hurt so badly by it all. So did Medina, apparently. He’d gone out of his way to make sure that Blair got the help he needed after the case was all over. Jim suspected that some of that was because the guy still had feelings for Naomi; and was, perhaps, trying to get back into her life. 

Medina seemed to be aware of Jim’s suspicions, even though he hadn’t voiced them out loud. “I  _did_  care what happened to Tommy, Detective Ellison. He was a good kid; a brave little guy, despite everything he’d been through. I felt partly responsible for his breakdown, and it was important to me that I tried to make amends. It still is.”

“And Naomi – Norma?” Jim couldn’t help asking.

Medina smiled wistfully. “Too much water under the bridge, Detective. By the time she turned on Buchanan, she wasn’t the same girl I used to know. Sure, I still cared for her. Still do, as a matter of fact. But not in a romantic way. More like… family, I guess you could say.  _Distant_  family. She, ah,” he shrugged. “She didn’t want to keep in touch. So as soon as I was satisfied that she and Tommy were going to be okay, I left them to get on with their lives. It was what she wanted.”

They’d talked more, mostly about the current situation and where things were going to go from here. And Medina had promised to come over this evening, to make sure Blair knew where he stood.

Jim’s musing – and food preparation – were interrupted when Blair emerged from the bathroom. “Hey, Chief?” Jim called out. “Food in about ten minutes. Okay?”

He heard Blair pause, before continuing on to his room. “Okay,” his partner’s voice acknowledged, the words barely audible, and certainly lacking enthusiasm.

The bathroom free, Jim took the opportunity to head in for a quick shower himself. 

***

By the time Jim emerged from his shower and got changed, Blair was in the kitchen, finishing up the food preparation Jim had begun. The familiar domesticity of it all – Blair taking over where Jim left off, just as they each had a million times since they became roommates - seemed to Jim to be a positive sign. Despite the intense trauma they’d just lived through – and the inevitable fallout to come – maybe, just  _maybe_ , there was a chance they could get back a little of the comfortable normality they’d enjoyed before it all happened.

Jim moved into the kitchen, surreptitiously taking in his partner’s appearance. Blair looked a little gaunt, a little tired. But he was dressed in clean clothes, and was finally clean shaven again, his freshly washed hair neatly pulled back into a ponytail. As Jim moved past him to help himself to coffee, he pointed out, “You’re looking better.” He tried to make a joke of it. “Although I was kinda getting used to the beard.”

Blair shrugged. He glanced at Jim, not really meeting his eyes, before looking back down at the soup he was stirring. “Yeah, well,” he said tonelessly. “It was a bit too ‘Charles Manson’. Not,” he added bitterly, “that there isn’t something appropriate about that.”

Jim had hoped to wait until they had some food inside them before getting into this, but he couldn’t stand it any longer. Moving up behind Blair, he took hold of him by the shoulders. “Chief,” he said firmly. “Stop it. Stop comparing yourself to people like that.” Blair had tensed under his hands, and Jim gave him a little shake. “Stop goddamn punishing yourself!”

Blair had stopped stirring the soup, although he still held the spoon stiffly in his hand. “Why should I?” His voice broke. “I should be in jail, man! I  _killed_ someone! I murdered my own father!”

Jim leaned closer, his breath stirring Sandburg’s ear. “You shot him, Sandburg. ‘Murder’ is a loaded word, okay? So let’s avoid using it, and stick to the facts. You  _shot_  him, yes. And you know what else? By doing so, you saved my life, Naomi’s life and your own - because the bastard had the place rigged to blow us all sky high.”

Reaching past Blair, who had gone rigid in his hold, Jim turned off the burner. Food would have to wait, now that this can of worms had been opened. “Come on,” he urged, steering Blair away from the stove and marching him stiff-legged into the living room. “Sit,” he ordered, pushing Sandburg toward the sofa. As his partner sat down - apparently stunned enough by what Jim had just told him to actually obey the order without protest - Jim perched facing him on the edge of the coffee table. He leaned forward, putting his hands on the other man’s knees, and forcing Blair to look at him. “You with me, Chief?” he asked.

Blair looked stunned. “What do you mean, he had it rigged?”

Jim kept his tone matter-of-fact. “Remember he said there was a plane standing by? That after you’d finished me off, he was going to take you and Naomi off to start a new life?” 

Blair nodded, so Jim carried on. “It was a load of bull, Chief. He had no intention of any of us getting out of there alive, including himself. There was enough semtex in that warehouse to blast a crater the size of the Superbowl.”

Blair seemed to be having trouble tracking. “I don’t get it, man,” he said. “He was going to kill us?  _All_  of us?”

Jim nodded. “That’s  _exactly_  what he planned to do. Once he had you and Naomi right where he wanted you – totally under his control – he was planning on taking both of you with him in a blaze of glory. He had a remote detonator in his hand, Blair. If you’d given him even one second of a warning – if you’d done anything other than  _exactly_  what you did, in fact – we’d  _all_  be dead now. And not only us – the whole neighborhood would have been flattened. God knows how many other people in the surrounding buildings would have been caught in the blast.”

Blair didn’t say anything, and Jim watched as a riot of emotions chased themselves across his face. After a moment, Blair gasped out, “But I didn’t know. I didn’t know, Jim!”

“Chief.” Jim’s voice was soft. “You’re in the clear. The Feds are treating the shooting as self-defense. The guy murdered two cops, for Christ sakes! He kidnapped and assaulted Naomi. The detonator was in his  _hand_.” 

Blair was shaking his head in denial. “I didn’t see it,” he whispered. “I didn’t know about the detonator, or the bomb, I swear. I just… when he said that about Naomi, about how he’d made her sorry – how she’d paid for what she’d done – I just lost it. I was so fucking angry, man.”

“Blair, I know.” Jim squeezed the thighs under his hands. “I know.”

“Then how can you say I’m in the clear? You saw me do it!”

“I didn’t see anything,” Jim answered honestly. “I had my eyes closed.”

“Come  _on_ , man!” Blair’s voice cracked. “You  _know_  what I did! You were  _there_!”

Jim shrugged. “In my statement, I said that Buchanan contacted you, after he kidnapped Naomi. You managed to convince him, over the course of the operation  _we_  ran, that you were on his side. After we finally got to meet him face-to-face at the warehouse, he overpowered me. You played on his delusions to persuade him to give you the gun. I was still a little bit out of it, after being knocked unconscious. But as far as I’m aware, you shot him to prevent him from triggering the explosives. End of story.”

“You lied.” Blair looked seriously upset. “Jim, I can’t believe you lied about all of that!”

Jim shrugged. “I believe obfuscation is the correct term.”

“Come  _on_ , man!”

“Listen.” Jim’s voice became hard. “I know what you did, and I know why you did it. For what it’s worth, I would probably have done exactly the same thing if it had been me in your place. But the point is, you fess up to it, and tell the Feds you shot that sick bastard in cold blood, and who the hell is going to gain from it, huh?”

“It’s the truth.” 

“ _Fuck_  the truth!” Blair flinched at the vehemence in Jim’s voice. “He’s  _dead_ , Blair. Buchanan is dead, and you know what? There is not one person on this whole goddamned planet who gives a  _damn_  about him. But Chief –  _you_  own up to this,  _you_  let that asshole ruin your life from beyond the grave, and I promise you, there will be plenty of hurt.  _You’ll_  be hurt. Naomi will be hurt. Is that what you want? Is that  _just_ , after what he already put you and your mom through?” He went for the jugular. “You want to see  _me_  hauled over the coals over this, huh? Because if you don’t back me on what I said, Chief, we’ll end up sharing a cell. Haven’t you damaged our friendship enough?”

Blair gasped, as if in pain. It seemed that the memory of his earlier transgressions had been totally eclipsed by the shooting. Bringing it up in such stark terms, while Blair was already so vulnerable, was perhaps not the kindest thing to do.

But sometimes, you had to be cruel to be kind. 

“Blair,” Jim urged softly, while he had his partner on the ropes. “Don’t do it. Don’t throw your life away over this. Don’t throw  _this_  away.” He reached out, and took Blair’s hand, squeezing the fingers hard in his own. “ _Please_ , Chief.”

Blair was breathing harshly, fighting for composure. After a moment, he glanced at Jim pleadingly. “Look, I, uh, I just need a little time, okay? I…” Blair paused, breathing hard. “I need to… to process this. On my own. All right, Jim?”

Jim nodded. Giving the hand he held one last squeeze before letting go, he left Blair sitting there, and went into the kitchen to put the soup back on.

***

The world had been turned on its head. 

Jim had lied. He’d perjured himself in an official statement to the FBI, with the sole purpose of getting Blair out of trouble.

Sure, Blair had seen the detective willing to throw out the book once before, when Incacha had been suspected of murder. But Blair hadn’t ever expected Jim to do it for  _him_  – especially after the way that Blair had betrayed him.

God, he had no idea what to do. His conscience, the morals he’d tried to live by ever since he’d adopted the name Blair Sandburg, all led to the inescapable conclusion that he should confess. That in order to prove to himself, once and for all, that he was  _not_  his father’s son; he should stand up and tell the truth, and admit the awful crime he had committed. Face the music, take his lumps. Be a  _man_. 

He was tired. So tired of the endless lies. So tired of hiding. Just this once, he desperately longed to be honest – about who he was, and what he’d done. 

But now, Jim had forced his hand. Shown him that, while owning up might be the  _moral_  thing to do, it would also be the  _selfish_  thing to do. Because the act of salving his own conscience would benefit no-one; but would, instead, undoubtedly bring pain and suffering on the very people – Naomi and Jim - who least deserved it. The two people he cared about more than anyone else in the world.

The FBI, apparently, believed the shooting to be an act of self-defense, committed during an undercover operation to take down a kidnapper who just _happened_  to be Blair’s biological parent. It would be child’s play to get out of this - all Blair had to do was confirm Jim’s take on the situation. Piece of cake, for a man who could lie as well as  _him_.

But the fact remained that he’d killed a man. He’d killed his own father. There’d been provocation, for sure; but in the end, that excused little. It had been Blair’s finger on the trigger, Blair’s hatred which had propelled the bullet, Blair’s intent that had stopped Buchanan’s heart. No matter what he decided to do, the personal consequences of that decision would be with him for ever.

Perhaps, if he didn’t get thrown in jail, that might be a fitting punishment in itself after all.

***

Jim decided not to press Blair right away. Instead, he tolerated his partner’s far away look as they ate; although Blair actually managed to consume very little. 

Eventually, though, Jim had to know where they stood. “Chief,” he said, as he began to clear the dishes. “The Fed in charge of the investigation is coming round at about nine o’clock. He wants to take your statement before he heads off back to DC.”

Blair nodded. “Okay.”

“Have you decided what to do?”

“I’m going to back your statement,” Blair said flatly. “What’s one more lie, right?”

Jim looked at him sharply, but held his peace. As long as Blair did the right thing, they could deal with the consequences later.

And deal with them, they would. He was absolutely adamant about that.

***

Even though Blair was expecting it, the knock at the door, when it came, set his heart to pounding.

Blair caught the worried glance Jim flashed him, on his way to open the door. Perversely, Blair couldn’t help muttering, “Don’t worry, man. I’ll back you up. I’ve got my lies all ready.”

To his amazement, Jim paused, and came toward him. A hard grip on his shoulder mirrored the hard look in Jim’s face. “It’s not  _that_  I’m worried about, you stupid jerk!” Jim hissed into his face. “It’s  _you_!” In the next moment, he let go and whirled away, striding across the room to the door, where the knock was sounding again. Just before he opened it, Jim growled back over his shoulder, “For god’s sake, get your head out of your ass, Sandburg!”

Blair felt oddly sucker punched. What the hell was  _that_  all about?

He was still reeling when the door opened to admit the Fed they’d been expecting. Schooling his features to neutrality with an effort, Blair stood to greet their visitor.

The man was smiling at him as he approached. “Hello, Tommy,” he said, holding out a hand. “Remember me?”

Suddenly the room had no air. Memories Blair had buried, which for days now had been closer to the surface than he’d wanted to acknowledge, swamped him. This man, with a younger face and fewer gray hairs, walking beside him every step as he relived, over and over, the most horrific thing he’d ever seen.

“Hey, whoa. Easy, Chief.” Jim’s voice was oddly gentle, and Blair latched onto it helplessly - the only thing of substance in the suddenly wavering reality of the world. “Come on, buddy. Let’s get you over here.” Then Jim’s voice turned sharp. “I can manage. Just give us a few minutes here, huh?”

Things after that got a little hazy, until the touch of something cold on his head brought Blair back a little. He was lying down, and Jim was wiping the sweat from his brow with a cold, wet facecloth. “Wha…” Blair began, the words thick and unwieldy in his mouth, “What happened?”

Jim’s face bore a flicker of a smile, although there were worry lines between his brows. The cloth moved to Blair’s neck, and he shivered at its touch. “I think you stood up too fast,” Jim said kindly. “Just take it easy, all right? Get your breath back. There’s no hurry.”

Blair felt his eyes prickle at the unaccustomed gentleness, and he swallowed, feeling utterly vulnerable. Desperate to regain some semblance of self-control, he tried to focus on his surroundings. He was on his own bed, his feet elevated on pillows. Jim was sitting on the bed beside him, a solid, dependable presence.

Blair took a couple of deep breaths, and the unwanted tears receded. He felt pretty pathetic. “I’m sorry,” he had to say.

Jim shrugged. “Don’t be, Chief. You’ve had a tough time. You’ve gotta expect some fallout.”

Blair nodded. That was true enough. “Thanks,” he whispered, still on the verge of tears, despite a gargantuan effort to suppress them.

The cloth was removed, and he felt Jim take hold of his hand. “S’okay, partner.” 

“Is…” Blair swallowed again – god damn it! He was such a freaking wuss! “Is  _he_  still here?” He paused, and the name came back to him. “Agent Medina, I mean?”

“Yeah.” Jim still held his hand - a lifeline as the world righted itself. “I told him to wait. But if you’re not up to it, I’ll send him away. He can get his goddamned statement in the morning. There are other flights he can catch.”

Jim sounded pissed off - Medina, it seemed, had rubbed him up the wrong way. Jim’s protectiveness warmed Blair’s heart, but Blair knew they shouldn’t put off the inevitable. “It’s okay,” he said earnestly. “I’m feeling a little better now, man. It’s best to get it over with, right?”

“When you’re ready,” Jim agreed. He was looking at Blair with a tender expression. “Don’t rush it, though. Hey,” he rose. “I’ll go get you some water, okay? Just stay there a while longer. Take your time.”

Blair nodded and, as Jim went out the door, fought with the tears which once again threatened to swamp him.

***

Medina was hovering near the kitchen counter when Jim emerged from Blair’s room, and headed for the refrigerator. “How is he, Detective?” Medina asked.

Jim paused, once hand on the fridge door. “He’s okay,” he answered tersely. “No thanks to you.” He yanked the door open angrily.

“Detective Ellison.” Medina’s voice was firm. “If you think I came here to cause that young man any further pain, you’re wrong. I told you this afternoon where I stand on that issue.”

Jim pulled out a bottle of water, and slammed the fridge door shut. He turned to glare at Medina, who looked irritatingly unruffled. “You hurt him, and you deal with me,” he said flatly. “He’s had enough.”

Medina held up both hands. “All I want is to take his statement. Nothing else. You’re a law enforcement officer yourself, you know the score.”

Jim snorted. “Just doing your job, huh?”

“That’s right.”

Jim advanced toward him. “Then do me one favor, huh?” He was perversely satisfied when Medina took an involuntary step backwards. “You cut it out with the ‘Tommy’ crap. His name is  _Blair_. You want to avoid raking up the past for him? You leave that name back there, where it belongs.” 

For a few seconds, their eye contact held, Medina not backing down an inch under Jim’s warning glare. Then he nodded. “ _Blair_  it is, then. I take your point.”

“Good.” Jim nodded in satisfaction. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going back in there to take care of my partner. He’ll be out to talk to you when he’s ready, and not before.” And turning on his heel, Jim left the agent there to stew.

***

“Here you go, tough guy,” Jim said, stepping back into Blair’s bedroom and handing him the bottle of water. Blair was amused to see that Jim had already loosened the cap; although he was secretly grateful. For some odd reason, he didn’t seem to have the strength of a baby right now.

Propping himself up on one elbow, Blair sipped the water gratefully, and endured his friend’s quietly solicitous presence as he slowly recovered from what, he now embarrassingly realized, could only be called a faint. Jim was sitting on the edge of the bed and, wanting to wipe the worried look off his face, Blair took refuge in self deprecation. “I guess I uh, took a header, man,” he said.

“You didn’t ‘take a header’, Sandburg,” Jim retorted dryly. “You swooned.”

“I did not!” Okay, this was better. This was normal. “I don’t ‘swoon’. What kind of word is that?”

“The right kind.” Jim looked, for a moment, as though he’d carry on with the banter, like he usually did. But to Blair’s dismay, he got all serious again. “Blair,” he said. “Look, I have to say this, before you go out there.”

Blair’s heart sank. Ellison wanted to talk, even though there was a humorous alternative - this was definitely the twilight zone. “ _What_  do you have to say?”

Jim was looking at him earnestly. “I didn’t mean it, Blair. About you ruining our friendship. And it’s not me I’m worried about, all right? I just wanted to make you see – make you understand – that if anything else happens to you, that it will affect me too. And I’m not talking about my job, here, or anything like that. I’m talking about  _me_.”

“I know.” Blair swallowed. How could he not, after the care he’d been shown the last little while? He reached for Jim’s hand, his returning strength evident in the grip. “I know, Jim. It’s okay.” The damned tears were back. 

Jim squeezed Blair’s hand in return. “Just so we understand each other, Junior,” he said. Then, to Blair’s relief – since any more of this would have him blubbering like a child - Jim let go and stood up. “Take your time,” he said. “When you’re ready, I’ll be out here with Medina. No rush.” And without another word, he went out through the French doors.

In his wake, Blair wiped his eyes furiously. And for a little while, warmth and gratitude threatened to swamp the pain and guilt which had dominated his emotions for so long.

***

Blair made a trip to the bathroom, where he washed his face and re-tied his hair. Then, heading out into the living room, he made his way over to where the other two men were sitting. 

Jim caught his eye as he approached, and nodded Blair toward the seat next to him on the sofa. A rush of warm emotion overcame Blair once again at the protectiveness of the gesture. Jim, it seemed, had gone right over into Big Brother mode. It didn’t happen very often, but when it did, oh boy. And Blair had to admit that he secretly got a kick out of having the big guy on his side – especially as there had been plenty of times in his life when he’d had no-one but himself to rely on.

Jack Medina was sitting at right angles to Jim, on the other couch. Blair nodded at him as he sat down. “Agent Medina,” he greeted.

Medina smiled. “It’s Assistant Director now, Blair.” There wasn’t any censure in the correction. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yeah. Uh, sorry,” Blair hedged. “Wigging out like that. It’s been a tough few days.”

Medina nodded, looking sympathetic. “So I understand.” 

Blair was feeling less stressed now they were actually face-to-face. He had some pretty bad memories of being around this guy, but despite that, he’d found Medina to be okay, for the most part. “So,” Blair ventured, emboldened by the small talk. “Jim says, you want to take my statement?”

Medina nodded. “That’s right. It’s just a formality, Blair. I already have statements from Detective Ellison and your mother, as well as Captain Banks. And the forensic evidence at the scene is pretty clear.”

“Oh. Right.” Blair’s nervousness, it seemed, hadn’t disappeared entirely, now they were down to brass tacks. 

As if he’d read Blair’s mind, Jim’s hand moved to rest on the small of Blair’s back, and the comforting touch did a lot to settle his jumpy nerves. “You said there was some stuff you wanted to tell him,” Jim addressed Medina. “Maybe you could do that first, huh? Get it out of the way.”

Medina nodded. “You already heard a lot of this today, Detective,” he said. “But I agree, Blair needs to hear it too.”

“Hear what?” Blair’s voice jumped a little. God, he was so tired of surprises.

Jim’s hand rubbed comfortingly, as Medina spoke. “You deserve an explanation, Blair, of how your father managed to escape from custody.”

“Don’t… don’t call him that. Okay?” It was bad enough that it was true – Blair hated to hear Buchanan referred to as his father. “Just… use his name or something.”

“I apologize.” Medina didn’t look surprised at the plea. Instead, he carried on without pause. “Joe Buchanan was ill, Blair. He spent the last eleven years of his sentence in a secure psychiatric hospital, diagnosed as suffering from a variety of personality disorders. Things apparently got much worse during his last few months there – his obsessions became all-encompassing, and his behavior more erratic. Finally, after he was sent for a CAT scan, it was discovered that he had a brain tumor.”

“Oh.” Blair blinked. 

“By the time it was diagnosed, it was inoperable,” Medina carried on. “Buchanan was dying. Unfortunately, he was still a dangerous man, a fact that wasn’t sufficiently understood by the psychiatrist who’d been treating him. Buchanan was clever, and his reasoning abilities were intact, even if he was delusional. He was fully aware that his disease was terminal, and he fixated on getting the three of you back together before he died, and making you pay for what you’d done. We now know that he made extensive plans to bring that aim to fruition.”

None of the stuff about how Buchanan had wanted to make them both pay was particularly news to Blair – Jim had worked it out days ago. “So,” Blair asked, “How did he get out?”

“He was being transferred from the psychiatric hospital to a secure hospice. We’re still not sure how he did it, but as a result, two guards and a medical orderly were killed. The transport van was found burnt out en-route, with the bodies still inside it, and Buchanan nowhere to be seen.”

“What I don’t understand,” Jim chipped in angrily, “is how you didn’t immediately suspect he’d gone to Cascade. I mean, you knew Blair and Naomi were here, right? It should have been the first place you looked! And not only that - you should have warned them he was on the loose!”

“I agree,” Medina conceded. “And I am very sorry that happened, Detective; Blair. All I can say is that there was a breakdown in communication at a bureaucratic level. Believe me, if  _I’d_  known about Buchanan breaking out, I’d have been on the first flight out here, and you, Blair, and your mother, would have been put immediately into protective custody. But, sad to say, I only found out about it when I went digging into Buchanan’s current whereabouts, after Captain Banks called me a few days ago.”

“He knew we were here,” Blair pointed out needlessly.  _He knew Jim was a sentinel too_ , his mind supplied. “How did he know so much about us?”

Medina shrugged. “He spent years obsessing over his family,” he said. “He was clever, devious. He put his intelligence into use to feed his obsession. How he got the information, I can’t tell you. Only that he did.”

“And so, once he’d gotten his revenge,” Blair muttered, “he wanted to take us with him. My mom and me.”

Medina nodded. “So it seems. But you stopped him, didn’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

Jim’s hand on Blair’s back had gone still. 

“Yes,” whispered Blair.

Medina nodded. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a tape recorder. “Time to switch this on, I believe,” he said. “Would you like Detective Ellison to stay, while you give me your statement?”

Jim turned his head, and what Blair saw in his eyes made him sit up straighter. “Yeah,” he said, turning to look back at Medina; his voice firm. “I would.”

Medina nodded. “Let’s begin, then.”

***

Jim closed the door behind Assistant Director Jack Medina. Then he locked it, putting on the chain for good measure. It was over. It was  _finally_  over. 

Although, in some ways, Jim couldn’t help but suspect that many of their problems were just beginning.

Blair had come through, like the trooper he was. He’d related the tale dispassionately, insinuating that he’d gone to Jim and Simon in the beginning, and that all his actions since had been a ploy to get them close to Buchanan, without Naomi being hurt in the crossfire. Barely faltering over the lie, he stated that he’d seen – and recognized – that Buchanan had a remote detonator in his hand. The guy was about to press the button, so Blair had shot him. What else could he have done?

Medina had taped the whole thing, and refrained from comment other than to prompt Blair now and again. Finally, seeming satisfied, he’d turned off the tape recorder. And both Jim and Blair had heaved an enormous sigh of relief.

Medina had stayed a while longer. There was, it seemed, a potential problem over jurisdiction, in that the FBI should have been called in as soon as it became clear who and what they were dealing with. But that was Simon’s area of concern, not theirs – although both Jim and Blair would back Simon to the hilt if it came down to an official investigation.

Medina hadn’t seemed to think that would happen. “Between you and me,” he’d said, “the Bureau will not be keen to see its complacency over the escape of a dangerous prisoner, or the subsequent breakdown in procedure, being looked at too closely. There were mistakes on both sides, Detective. But at the end of the day, Buchanan is dead. He left a trail of bodies behind him; but it could have been worse. Much worse. Thanks to you, Blair, it wasn’t.” Blair had flinched under Jim’s hand at that assertion, but Medina had carried on oblivious. “I don’t believe that this matter will be taken any further. Not via official channels, at least.”

So that was it. End of story. And now, it was time to deal with the fallout.

Blair was still on the couch, where Jim had left him. He looked frayed, somehow. As though bits of him were beginning to unravel and drift off. Jim shook himself of that disturbing image and, heading into the kitchen, he poured two glasses of Scotch from the stash he kept in one of the cupboards.

“Here,” he said, as he came back over to the couch. He held one of the glasses out to Blair. “Drink this.”

Blair took the glass, but didn’t drink. Instead, he looked up at Jim. “Oh, hey,” he said. “I have to call the hospital, man. In fact, I should just go over there.”

Jim resumed his place next to Blair on the couch. “Your mom’s not there, Chief,” he said. “A friend of hers came over this afternoon to collect her. Woman called Fiona? Naomi said you knew her.”

“Fiona.” Blair looked puzzled for a moment, until memory returned. “Oh,  _Fiona_. From the women’s retreat. Right?”

“Yeah.” Jim took a sip of the amber liquid, relishing the burn as it went down. Man, that hit the spot.

Blair was nodding. “That’s good. That’s the best place for her to go. They… they helped her a lot in the past, you know?”

“Yeah. That’s what she told me.”

There was silence for a little while. Jim downed his whisky, and contemplated getting another; but Blair just sat and stared at his, not seeming inclined to drink it. After a little while, Jim ventured, “You doing okay, Chief?”

“I don’t know.” Blair sounded lost.

Jim reached out, taking the full glass out of his partner’s hands and placing it on the coffee table next to his empty one. “It’s going to be okay,” he said, trying to catch Blair’s eye. “It’s over, Blair.”

Pain-filled eyes lifted, meeting Jim’s. “Is it?” The tears his partner had been holding off all evening had made a reappearance. “I don’t know what to do now, Jim,” Blair whispered helplessly. “I just don’t know.”

Wordlessly, Jim opened his arms, and pulled Blair in. And as his friend finally permitted himself some respite in Jim’s embrace, letting out the grief, the fear, the guilt and the pain he’d been alone with for so long, Jim did his best to soothe and comfort and reassure.

And, in response to Blair’s dilemma, he made plans.

***

**Epilogue**

It was a lovely fall morning. This area was beautiful anyway, but what had recently become Jim’s regular Saturday morning drive up here was all the nicer on days like this.

Jim parked the truck, and reflected on how relieved he was that Brother Jeremy had granted him special dispensation to bring his truck right into the monastery grounds. He’d hated the idea of having to wait for the rickety old bus which, in any case, only got driven to the pickup point every other week. Thankfully, under the circumstances, Jeremy had never once insisted that he use it.

Jim sat for a moment after turning off the engine, to think back over the past few weeks, and the reason which had impelled him to keep visiting this place every weekend.

He’d brought Blair here the morning after Jack Medina’s visit – just over six weeks ago, now. It had been a rough night, with Blair as close to a total breakdown as Jim had ever seen him. In the aftermath, Jim had bundled his exhausted partner into the truck in the early hours, and gotten on the road. 

Blair hadn’t expressed any curiosity about where they were going – it was as if he’d given up control and placed himself totally in Jim’s hands, so desperate was he for some respite from the awful choices he’d been forced to make. He’d fallen asleep not long after Jim had hit the freeway, and not woken until they’d arrived here, outside the door of St Sebastian’s.

Haunted eyes had been turned on Jim. “No,” Blair had gasped. “I can’t be… I can’t see  _Marcus_ , man. Come on! After what I did? After how… judgmental I was about  _him_?”

Jim hadn’t budged an inch. “He knows, doesn’t he? About your past, about your dad. Naomi told me.”

Blair had glanced miserably at the building. Brother Jeremy had just come out of the front door, and was heading toward them. “He… he was a chaplain,” Blair said, his voice tinged with hopelessness. “At the psychiatric hospital, when we first came to Cascade.”

Jim nodded. “It’s how you met. He spent time with you, when your head was messed up. Helped you through stuff. Naomi told me that’s why you’ve been coming here all these years. You and he got close.”

“I used to pretend Marcus was my father.” Blair’s self condemnation was tangible. “How pathetic is that, huh?” 

Jim reached out, and gripped Blair’s wrist. “It’s not pathetic at all.”

A short while afterward, in Brother Jeremy’s office, Blair had agitatedly paced up and down, berating Jim for bringing him here. Saying how much he didn’t want Marcus to see him now he was a murderer. Declaring himself a hypocrite, for condemning the man for the crimes he had committed as Jackie Kozinski, when  _he_  had done  _much_  worse – he’d betrayed his friend and killed his own father. 

Marcus had entered, and Blair had stopped pacing mid-tirade, closing his eyes and hanging his head in shame. But the monk hadn’t hesitated; he’d immediately moved to envelop Blair in a bear hug. Over the distraught man’s shoulder, Marcus had met Jim’s eye. “His mother called me,” he said. “She told me what happened. You did the right thing, bringing him here.”

Now, six weeks later, Jim knew Marcus had been right.

Brother Marcus was in a unique position to understand the straits Blair had found himself in. As Jackie Kozinski, he knew quite a bit about making hard choices, and learning to live with shame.

As Brother Marcus, he knew more than a thing or two about forgiveness. And that was ultimately what Jim was hoping his partner might learn from him. 

How to forgive  _himself_.

“Hey!” 

Jim was shaken out of his reverie by the grinning face at the truck window. He wound the window down, smiling back at his friend. “Hey, Chief!” 

“Come on in, man,” Blair beckoned. “There might be some lunch left, if you hurry!”

As Jim followed Blair around the building and in toward the refectory, he studied the changes six weeks had wrought. And he was pleased by what he saw. Blair had put back a little of the weight he’d lost, and sported a healthy tan from the groundwork he’d been doing every day. And even better than that…

“So, Brother  _Terence_  decided to bring it up with Brother Patrick. Only he didn’t know that the ones that actually  _worked_  had been taken into town by Brother Cillian… what?” Blair had caught Jim’s bemused smile, and he stopped. “What’s so funny, man?”

Jim shrugged. Blair’s usual non-stop chatter had been all that had been missing the last time he’d been here. It seemed that it was back. “You’re… looking good, partner.  _Really_  good.”

“Get outta here.” Blair punched him on the arm, but he looked pleased. “Come on, Jim,” he said, grabbing Jim by the arm to make him start walking again. “We’d better hurry, or there’ll be nothing left. So as I was saying, Brother  _Cillian_ …” 

***

Blair was doing well. But he thought, he told Jim later, as they walked through the orchard, that he might stay a little while longer - because there were still a few things he needed to process. “And tell me, man,” Blair said, looking worried for the first time since Jim had arrived this morning, “if this is out of the question, okay? But Marcus thinks you and I need to talk some more before I decide what to do next.  _Really_  talk. Because there’s still a lot of stuff I haven’t really faced, you know? And most of it’s to do with you.”

Jim turned to look at him. “If you’d said that to me a few weeks ago, I might have been less than enthusiastic,” he said. “But now?”

“You’re still less than enthusiastic, right?” Blair joked. But there was a very real wariness in his face. He was truly afraid, Jim realized, that Jim would refuse.

Jim shrugged. “You know me, Chief. I hate to dig too deep. But if it’s what you need? Then I’ll do it.”

“Really?” The desperate hope in Blair’s voice obliterated any lingering reluctance Jim had.

“Yeah,” he said decisively. “Really.”

***

As he had for the past three weekends, Jim opted to stay the night. The monks tended to retire in the early evening, soon after Compline, so he and Blair went to sit in the empty refectory. Blair had managed to rustle up some hot chocolate, and Jim produced a hip flask to spice it up.

“Hey!” Blair grinned, as Jim tipped a good measure into his mug. “That’s not allowed.” He took a sip. “But man, it tastes good.”

Jim liberally dosed his own. “That’s one of the reasons you’ll never be a monk, Sandburg, despite staying here all these weeks.” Jim saluted him with his drink. “You’d never manage the ‘obedience’ part.”

“Speak for yourself, man,” Blair retorted indignantly. “ _You_  brought the hooch!”

They sat for a while in comfortable companionship. But something was brewing in the air, almost like an electrical storm to Jim’s senses. Blair, it seemed, was working himself up to broach one of his pressing issues.

Jim just waited, biding his time with innocuous small talk, and giving Blair the space he needed.

Finally, Blair looked up meaningfully from his mug. “Jim,” he ventured. “Can I ask you a question?”

Ah, finally. “Shoot.”

“You know when… when I was on the run? Did you really think I was some kind of covert ops guy?”

Jim put down his mug, and folded his hands on the table top. “It was the only thing that made sense at the time,” he admitted. 

Blair shook his head incredulously. “That’s wild.”

Jim had to agree - it  _was_  wild, really, in retrospect. 

Changing tack slightly, Jim tossed back, “Can I ask  _you_  a question?”

Blair looked at him warily. “Sure,” he agreed.

“Just before you shot Buchanan,” Jim said, trying not to notice how Blair still flinched at the words. “You said some stuff. About how you hated me. How you were angry, because I never gave you the benefit of the doubt.”

Blair looked ashamed. “I don’t hate you, Jim I didn’t mean it.”

“But you  _were_  angry,” Jim insisted. “The other stuff you said – about how I was too ready to believe the worst of you?” He tried to maintain eye contact, but Blair looked away suddenly, his expression pained. Jim carried on, nevertheless. “You were right, Chief. I was, and I’m sorry.”

Blair didn’t seem all that happy, now they’d got down to it. But certain things needed to be said, regardless. And the genie was already out of the bottle. “You know, Blair,” Jim said. “What you did, it hurt me a lot.”

Blair nodded, looking miserable and ashamed. “I know.”

Jim reached across, and captured Blair’s hand. “Hey, hey, come on, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m not trying to upset you Chief, okay? I’m just trying to explain why I reacted like I did. I felt like the whole fucking world had ended. And you know why?”

Blair still wouldn’t look at him. “I think I do, man. I betrayed you.”

“That’s not it! Will you just listen to me here?” Jim was frustrated, worried that Blair would hear the superficial words, and not what he  _meant_  by them. “Okay, okay, I’m not saying it right. Hang on.” He took a deep breath, then tried again. “It hurt, Chief, because you  _matter_. Because during the time we’ve been together, you’ve gained my trust, my respect. Because I care about you. Because you’re my  _family_ , all right?”

That got Blair’s attention, at least. “Jim-” he began.

But Jim was on a roll. “One thing that’s true, Chief,” Jim said, looking earnestly at Blair, “is that we don’t always get the family we deserve.” He paused. “I didn’t.  _You_  sure as hell didn’t.”

Blair closed his eyes. His hand, in Jim’s gripped back, hard, then pulled away.

Jim carried on, relentless. “You know the old saying, huh? You can’t choose your family, but you can choose your friends. Well, it’s true. Except, I’d go a little bit further. Look at these guys.” Jim waved a hand, indicating the building they sat in. “The monks here. They’re a family. They call each other ‘Brother’. I think you  _can_  choose your family.” 

Blair’s eyes opened. “That’s sappy, man. Even for you.” He was grinning now, trying masterfully not to add to the mush, despite the flush Jim’s declaration had brought to his cheeks. Then he gave up.  _“My heart is open wide tonight,”_  Blair quoted,  _“for stranger, kith or kin. I would not bar a single door, where love might enter in.”_

Jim picked up his hip flask, and refilled their mugs. “I think you got it, Chief.” He took a sip. “So, you think it’s time you came home yet?”

Blair lifted his mug, and they clicked them together in a toast. “Yeah,” Blair agreed, his smile the happy, carefree one Jim hadn’t seen for far too long. “I think it is.”

  
The End

  
 **Note:**  Blair’s quote at the end of this story is from  _The Romance of a Christmas Card_  by Kate Douglas Wiggin, 1916


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